


the body electric

by Nomette



Series: l'impératrice directeur [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Courser Culture, Drama, F/M, Politics, Reforming the Institute for Fun and Profit, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-05-28 23:03:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6349234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nomette/pseuds/Nomette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Even humans are afraid of me," X6 says, toneless. "Why aren't you?" Curie’s first impulse is to say that X6 isn’t scary, but this is a total lie. It is simply that Curie has seen too much- human beings reduced to sacks of meat, men who wear skulls on their heads and string up their enemies as decorations, whole cities reduced to smoking ash, two hundred years of nothing, over and over- for a single man in a black coat to phase her.</p><p>“If I was afraid of people just because they were dangerous, I would never have left my vault,” Curie says at last. On a whim, she raises her hand and steals X6’s glasses off his face. He squints a little without them. The sight makes Curie grin. “Fear is not useful for gathering good data. I do not believe that you will hurt me, not when we are working towards the same goals.” Curie raises her chin, looks X6 directly in the eyes. “If your goal is to further science, collaboration is the only logical outcome.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. G5-19

**Author's Note:**

> A heavily edited repost of the FKM fill by the same name, now with 100% more politics!

Madame Davielle is in an important meeting with the Institute director, and so it falls to Curie to wait outside the door and watch the synths and doctors bustle by wielding clipboards and mops. No one will talk to her. The synths don’t notice when she tries to speak to them, and the doctors stare blankly, then scurry away. She’s just about to start scribbling in her notebook when one of the men walking by stops, stares, and then marches up to her.

“G5-19! I hadn’t heard that you had been reclaimed. What are you doing here instead of at the bureau?”

“I’m waiting for Madame Davielle to finish her meeting.”

“My god, what’s wrong with your audio files? Try to speak clearly.” This seems rude. Perhaps they have different social norms in the Institute?

“I--am---waiting-- for---Madame---” Curie says.

“Never mind that,” the man says scornfully. “Come along. We’ll get you wiped, get that nasty commonwealth out of your head.”

“No thank you,” Curie says, affronted. The man gapes at her, then grabs her arm and tries to pull her. The man is tall, but Curie has spent the last month working on farms and shooting raiders. She does not move. Anger is beginning to creep down her spine, making her vision sharp. “Unhand me, please.”

The man lets go of her arm, face flushed with anger, and Curie thinks for a moment that he is going to attack her. Instead, he glances around and then gestures to a courser who happens to be walking by.

“X6! Come over here immediately. This synth is an escape risk!”

“I am not going anywhere!” Curie says, offended. “Madame told me to stand here!” X6 walks over, his movements fast and fluid, as though his personal clock runs faster than the people around him. Curie folds her arms and glares at him.

“G5-19,” he says. “You ran away to the Railroad.”

“My name is Curie!” On hearing the name a second time, Curie remembers that her body was in the custody of a person from the railroad before she was uploaded. “Ah! This is all a misunderstanding. I am not G5-19. Madame uploaded my personality and memories into this body after the previous occupant was lost in an unfortunate incident with a memory wipe.”

“Where did your memory and personality come from?”

“I was a modified Miss Nanny, a Contagions Vulnerability--” the man cuts her off.

“Well, at least they didn’t try to put a human through that. X6, take her to the bureau. There might still be files on the railroad left. This new audio programming is intolerable.” X6 grabs Curie by the wrist, his grip firm but not painful. Then he starts to walk.

It’s like Curie’s wrist has been encased in steel: pulling, straining with her whole body, pushing against his arm: none of it has any effect at all.

“You’ll only hurt your wrists,” X6 says. “You’ll be better off once the reprogramming is completed. It’s amazing that you were able to survive in the Commonwealth at all. You’re better off here.” A woman in a lab coat passes the three of them, and Curie cries out for help. Nothing. The woman ignores her and walks faster. Where is Davi? Davi would never allow anyone to treat her like this.

“Madame!” Curie yells, twisting to face the conference room. “Madame! Davielle! Davi!” Nothing. The scientists pass, ignoring her attempts to pry her wrist free. Curie’s head is so fluttering with panic that she only remembers that her syringer is still strapped to her thigh when her fingers brush against it.

Davielle said not to attack anyone in the Institute, but surely this is a special case? Curie grabs the syringer and fires two doses directly into the side of the courser’s neck, then a third for good measure. X6 turns and looks at her, forming something like an expression for the first time, and Curie feels a bolt of fear down the back of her neck. X6 snatches her rifle from her hands and strikes across the torso with it, pain flaring in her side. Curie slams her forehead into his face, breaking his nose, and runs. Davi, where is Davi? Curie sprints up the stairs and runs through the double doors, but it’s not the conference room. In her panic, she’s stopped on the wrong floor, at a dead end. X6 is in the doorway. There’s a balcony. They’re on the third floor.

“Davi,” Curie screams, and jumps. A moment of weightless terror, and then she hits the ground with a crack. Pain floods through her system: she knows without needing to check that’s she’s broken at least one bone, possibly two.

“Davi,” she yells, and begins to crawl towards the center. She is, she thinks, in shock. The world is fading in and out to the tune of the pain in her ankles: periodic flashes of pain wipe out the world, and then she comes back keeps crawling. The blades of grass are tickling her forearms. Tears are leaking down her face and running into the collar of her shirt.

There are boots on the grass in front of her.

“You’re only hurting yourself,” the courser says in a puzzled tone, and then there’s the familiar ffft of Davi’s syringer. A needle is jutting from the courser’s hand.

“Get away from my research assistant!” Davi yells. There are now four doses of sedatives in X6’s system. He wobbles, then removes the syringe and throws it on the ground.

“She needs to be reset,” he slurs.

“Like hell,” says Davi. “What’s your name?”

“X6-6-6-88, m’am.”

“Stay where you fucking are.” Davi kneels next to Curie, already taking a stimpack out of her pocket. “There’s about to be some bullshit,” Davi says in french. “Don’t argue with anything I say. I’ll explain later.” Despite the pain, Curie feels a flush of relief. Davi will get them through it. She’s bluffed her way through raider camps and gunner encampments and hostile scavengers, and she always, always explains afterwards. Curie lets herself go slack and float in the haze of Med-X and stimpacks. Dimly, as though from a distance, she can hear Davi speaking.

“What the hell did you do to my property, you dim-witted thug?”

“Don’t blame me for your shitty programming, you commonwealth bitch. I don’t care if you’re related to Shaun, your synth is clearly malfunctioning. Her audio input isn’t even understandable.”

“She sounds like that because I programmed her to speak mainly in french, my native language, which you would have known if you’d asked me. In the future, keep your hands off my property.”

“She’s an institute unit. What gives you a right to her?”

“She’s mine because I killed for her,” Davi snaps. “I fought my way by fist and by bullet, through miles of crowded wastes to find her. I made her, every inch of her, to be the way I wanted my research assistant to be, and you would have wiped all of my work through sheer stupidity.” There’s pure venom in Davi’s voice.

“Are you threatening me?”

“I’m telling you not to interfere in things you don’t understand. Dismissed.”

“You have no--”

“ _Dismissed_.” Curie is vaguely aware that a crowd has gathered around them. X6’s has gone oddly still, his breath coming slow. Curie has got some syringes in her pack and strapped to her thigh. She goes slowly to her knees, careful of her leg, and takes out a small syringe of psycho. X6 tries to step away from her and crumples onto the grass.

“Stop,” he says, voice slow and distorted. Davi glances at the two of them.

“Curie?”

“Madame, X6 has been overdosed. If he doesn’t get counter-stimulants, he will stop breathing.”

“Go ahead,” Davi says. Curie tries to get X6’s glove off, but he pulls away from her.

“X6,” Davi says, and kneels and looks him in the eye. “Please let Curie do her work.” Curie doubts that X6 can recognize anything at this point, but something in Davi’s tone must reach him because he goes still, his eyes glossy.

“I’m sorry,” Curie whispers, and pushes in the needle.

 

Curie and Madame are in the drug lab working on the complicated cocktail of chemicals necessary to counteract four doses of sedative when the man comes back in, accompanied by three coursers and the director.

“This defective synth tried to attack me,” the man spits. “And Davielle threatened me, when all I did was instruct this courser to defend me.”

“You’re lying,” Curie blurts out.  

“Of course she would say that,” the man spits. “Davielle instructed her to.”  Curie starts to speak, but Davi holds up her hand.

“Let’s check the video footage,” she says. There isn’t a video in that corridor, but the coursers generally carry cameras on them for surveillance, and X6 caught most of the argument. Davi uses it to play the argument back from the beginning, expressionless. When the video finishes, she clicks it off and gives the man a look of total contempt.

“A written acknowledgement that you are a liar and no respecter of other people’s property will serve. Please write it out, then send it to me, and I will post it in a public place.”

“That seems appropriate,” Shaun says, and the man wilts under his scrutiny. Curie’s enjoyment of the man’s punishment is cut short by X6 beginning to stir on the surgical table, forcing Curie to hurry over and check his blood pressure. Ah, well. When she glances up again, the man has left, and Davi and Shaun are arguing about something.

“...has got that creepy sex doll, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have my research assistant. She wasn't even doing anything, just standing by the door humming.”

“That’s the point, Davi! Why has she got all these extra protocols? She’s a medical robot, not a human being. She’ll confuse the other synths.”

“And Eve won’t? Curie’s increased latitude is useful. It allows her to make good judgement calls in the field.” X6 jerks awake on the table. He grabs her wrist and for a moment Curie thinks that they’re going to have to repeat the scene from earlier, but then he realizes he’s lying on an operating table and lets go of her.

“Am I being decommissioned?” He closes his eyes like he’s in pain, but doesn’t move.

“No. I am merely administering drugs to counteract the effects of all the sedatives. I apologize for shooting you so many times.” X6 doesn’t say anything, but he takes a deep, rattling breath and visibly resets his expression. Decommissioned, Curie thinks, feeling faintly nauseous. Why would X6 wake up on a surgical table and ask if he’s going to be killed? Surgical tables are for saving people.

“Are you still due to be wiped?” X6 asks. Curie’s tempted to stick him with the needle harder than strictly necessary, but she can’t bring herself to hurt someone who’s lying helpless on a bed.

“No. If you don’t believe me, you can ask Madame.” In the silence, Curie can hear the director begrudgingly agreeing to allow Curie her freedom. Another win for Davielle.

“I believe you,” X6 says quietly.

“Really?”

“Yes. The runners go into hysterics as soon as they see me, but you didn’t move. What was that weapon?”

“It’s a syringer,” Curie says primly. Behind her, she hears Davi and Shaun leave the room, still arguing.  X6’s eyes are flickering back and forth, chasing something that Curie can’t see. Hmm. Hallucinations are a possible symptom of the overdose. Curie places her hand on X6’s, gently stroking her thumb over the top of his fingers. “What you’re seeing is not real. Focus on the sound of my breathing and stay calm. It’ll be over soon.” The last part is a lie, but Madame has assured her that patients appreciate soothing lies more than rough approximations of the truth.

It takes a little under ten minutes for X6 to stop twitching, and another fifteen before he jerks abruptly into an upright position. For a moment Curie thinks she’s given him too much psycho, and then she remembers that coursers just move that quickly.

“Feeling better?” Curie asks, flustered.

“Yes. You’re an exemplary medical unit.” It sounds like a compliment, or maybe a thank you. It’s hard to tell.

“You’re welcome,” Curie says tentatively. “Let me check your pulse.” X6’s vitals check out, so Curie clears him to go back to his rounds, feeling oddly embarrassed about the press of her fingers against X6’s throat. It’s nothing, really, and yet Curie gets the feeling that X6 isn't touched very often. He steps easily off the high operating table, buttons his coat back up, puts his gloves on, and turns to Curie.

“You surprised me. It won’t happen again.” Curie thinks of of her syringer, of the data she has on courser metabolisms, of the look on X6’s face when he awoke on the operating table.

“No,” she agrees. “It won’t.”

 

The argument over Curie’s independence continues over the next few days, and culminates in Curie being outfitted with courser enhancements. Davielle asked, of course. Davi always asks Curie what she wants. But she asked after spending a lot of time and effort to make it happen, and she was annoyed when she asked, if not with Curie, and it seemed like she’d already decided what Curie’s answer would be. Curie said yes, hesitantly, and Davielle didn’t ask a second time.

Curie is currently in a sterile Institute waiting room outside the surgery center, clenching and unclenching her fingers as she tries to imagine what it’s like to be a courser. Do they see more, hear more? Will it be as overwhelming as the first time her body was changed, or will the change be more gradual?

X6 comes in and sits down across from her.

“In my judgement, you are not ready to be fitted with these enhancements,” he says. "The enhancements which allows coursers to be so effective can be overwhelming. Furthermore, they require great responsibility. I do not believe you have been sufficiently tested."

“I agree,” Curie says unhappily. “But Madame Davielle asked me to, and I do not want to make Madame’s life harder.” Davielle is always stressed, these days. She watches the other scientists with a pursed glare, as though itching to pull her gun out and shoot them all, and at night she mumbles her husband’s name, and tells him to run.

“She is an exemplary combatant and scientist,” X6 says. “I suppose I should defer to her judgement.”

“Is it difficult?” Curie asks him. “The transition? What is it like, I mean?” X6 pauses, thinks about it.

“You will have to relearn movement. Walking, running, jumping. Handling objects. I picked it up quickly, but it can take longer for some. Not too long. A few days for basics and four to six weeks for mastery on average.” There’s unmistakable pride in X6’s voice, as if average is something he’s only seen on his way to the top.

“How long did it take you?”

“18 days. Curie, why is Madame Davielle so set on getting you these enhancements?” When not being hauled away against her will, Curie enjoys dealing with the other synths. Human speech is filled with lies, double entendre and subtext that frustrate and torment Curie. Synths just want to know.

“I am probably the most highly qualified medical technician in the Commonwealth with the exception of perhaps two other scientists. Madame wants me to continue to accompany her in the field. She claims that I am disarming. This may have the property of allowing her to enter places more easily.” X8-66 frowns at her.

“I assume that your use of the word disarming does not refer to removing limbs or firearms, as I am skilled in both of those.”

“It means that people like me, I think. It is very human. I do not understand it yet.” This seems to be a limitation that X6-88 accepts, because he nods and then, unexpectedly, reaches out and touches her shoulder.

“You seem to be well-programmed. I’ll see you after your surgery.” He speaks like their conversation is over. Curie starts to speak, but then there’s a knock on the door, and then a doctor is calling her into the surgery room. What’s one more minor trauma after two hundred years alone in the vault? Curie goes in, scared but willing, and lies down on the table, the metal cold against her back. Falling asleep ought to be difficult, but it is so very easy: the prick of a needle, and Curie’s body goes heavy and dim, her anxiety muted by the rush of her body, the weight of being. There’s something frightening about sleep, the way the body abruptly and totally overrides the mind.

Curie drifts, and wakes slowly. The lights overhead are too bright.

 

A partial list of things Curie is now capable of: cracking human bones bare-handed, changing her vision to focus on faraway objects like a scope, going several days without food, running for up to twelve hours without pause. She never gets to hear the rest of the list: when she tries to sit up in bed she cracks her head on the doctor above her, causing him to flee the room. She’s alone now. Wincing, she tries to get up, but her vision is strangely blurry, her eyes not focusing even when she squints. It’s not like when she switched from being a robot to being a synth; her body feels more or less the same. It’s the world that’s changed.

Smells are sharper, more recognizable, sounds louder. She can’t see anything. Slowly, she walks across the room, her hand out in front of her. It’s a surprise when she hits the wall. Now, to grab a water bottle. Slowly, very slowly, Curie reaches for the bottle, then gingerly picks it up and empties it into her mouth.

There’s something chemical in the water, something she can’t identify. Curie drinks it anyway, thinking of all the dubious water sources she and Davi have sampled in their travels throughout the Commonwealth. It’s too bright, this room, and it smells of blood and antiseptic and meat, the cut smell of Curie’s own flesh, though she can’t feel any of the cuts. The only sound is the rise and fall of Curie’s breathing, the scrape of her shirt against her coat, soft, yet overwhelming. Outside in the hall people are hurrying from appointment to appointment, their footsteps strangely clear despite the closed door. Too scared to leave, Curie huddles in the corner, one hand over her eyes.

It’s not what she thought it would be, this life outside the vault.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, someone pauses outside the door, then comes in, bringing the smell of leather and the rustle of a coat with them.

“X6?” Curie guesses.

“Yes. I see you’re having trouble focusing your eyes. Stay still, and think of something calming.” X6’s voice is perfect for this: quiet, cool, authoritative.  Curie breathes in and runs through the periodic table, Hydrogen Helium Lithium Beryllium Boron, the numbers whirring through her head. She’s gotten adept at biting down panic recently. The room is silent except for the perfect metronome of X6’s breathing, his lungs moving in time with Curie’s own. Curie can hear it when he opens his mouth to speak, but it’s still a little bit of a shock.

“You have a new set of muscles now. Were you briefed on how to control them?” When Curie shakes her head no, X6 runs her through a series of exercises for the various muscles of her neck, then instructs her to raise her hands and touch her temples. New scars form a ridge under Curie’s fingertips.

“This controls your magnification. Now, try to move them. Tense. That’s magnification. Relax. That’s local vision.” He makes her do this a few times before letting her open her eyes at last. X6-88's voice is soothing. There are no traps in it, only clear expectations and instructions. Curie occasionally succumbs to bouts of miserable desire to be a robot again, and the thing she misses most is the simplicity.

"Thank you," she says, and sits up. Her eyes go fuzzy, then adjust, X6 swinging into perfect relief. The operation added several pounds to her, but Curie feels oddly light.

"You adjusted at an acceptable rate," he comments. "How is your movement?"

“Fine, I think.” She stands up cautiously, then walks over to X6, who smiles a little, or maybe just smirks.

“You’ll need to see a human to compare. Everyone does.” He takes a pen from a pocket and hands it to her. Curie take it and inspects it, curious. It’s just a pen. She scribbles a little C on her palm to check.

“You have good fine control,” X6 comments. “Now, push down firmly on the side of the pen.” Curie does. The pen bends under the curve of her thumb, the metal deforming and twisting.

“You should avoid touching humans as much as possible until your control of yourself is perfect, unless you want to break someone’s bones. If someone attempts to touch you, you must not resist. We can hurt people much more easily than most of them can hurt us. It was suggested that you wear a courser uniform as to make it clear that you are not to be interacted with.” There's something in his tone Curie can't track.

"Do you want me to?"

"No," X6-88 says after a long pause. "You were made for research. While your reflexes are enhanced, you are not a courser.” Curie nods. All of the coursers carry themselves with an unconscious pride, a certain swagger, although X6 has more of it than most. It means something to them, to wear their leathers.

“Perhaps I’ll get a reinforced labcoat,” Curie says, thinking of the outfit Davielle wears. “I could ask the people who made your outfit to get me a belt for my syringes.”

“Are you going to keep wearing that thing?” X6 asks.

“Better to be prepared,” Curie says blithely, and smiles at him. His eyebrows rise slightly above the rim of his glasses in a movement that Curie might not have caught before having enhancements put in. Movement is clearer, somehow, more obvious. She wonders if X6 has been having expressions all along and no one but the other coursers can see them.

“You said we had to be careful with humans? Are we also more sturdy in proportion to our increased strength?” X6-88 nods. Curie reaches out slowly to touch his face, giving him plenty of time to move or say something, but he just watches. She runs a finger over the side of his face. His skin is warm, firm under her finger. Delicate. She could crush the bones of his cheek, now, if she pushed too hard. Something about the contact makes her faintly dizzy and warm. X6-88 follows the path of her fingers with her eyes, then removes her hand gently from his face, the leather of his gloves cold against her hands.

Curie entwines her fingers with his and pushes, curious to see what their relative strength is like now. She can’t push him far, but he does move, his body and shoulders straining against her. They push against each other a few moments more, and then Curie stops, smiling.

“You are an exemplary courser, of course.” There are things in her voice she can hear that she couldn’t hear before- the thrum of her vocal cords, the way the air comes out of her mouth in a rush.

“You should be able to take the rest from here,” he says, untangling their fingers. “I recommend you acquire sunglasses. The lighting in here is not optimal for our eyes.”

“Why don’t we ask them to turn down the lights? It would also help with the problem of generating electricity.” X6 stares at her like she’s said something outrageous.

“We shouldn’t interfere with the scientists, Curie.”

“You can do science just fine with a desk lamp,” Curie assures him, thinking of the damp, dusty vault that was her prison for two centuries. Davielle is coming down the hall. It takes Curie a moment to process how she knows it, and then she realizes: it’s the click of Davi’s little heels. She hadn’t even realized how different they were from everyone else in the Institute.

“Learn how to shoot before changing the whole Institute,” X6 suggests, and Davi knocks on the door.

 

A few days of practice, and then Davi takes Curie on a supply run to test out her new skills. The supplies, sadly, are in a wet miserable cave. They fight their way through the usual assortment of mirelurks and cockroaches, Curie armed with her syringer and a baseball bat. The first time her strike cracks a mirelurk shell, she’s so surprised she almost drops her bat and Davi has to finish off the poor thing with a round of shots to the head. Both of them are soaked in dirty water by the end of the fight. It stinks, but Curie hasn’t got any other clothes. Davi surveys the two of them and smiles.

“Perfect. If there were any bugs on us, they’re short-circuited by now. Ah, ‘Bugs’ is pre-war slang for listening devices used to listen to people without their consent. Curie, I, I’m sorry I called you my property in front of Shaun. You’re not property.” A little knot of anxiety deflates in Curie’s chest. She’d known it wasn’t true, but, stupidly, it had still hurt. Davi takes Curie’s hands and looks very intensely her eyes. “You’re a person, and I respect that, but I was...I was afraid that if I tried to insist on your rights Shaun would wipe you just to make a point.” Davi’s eyes are glittering with furious, unshed tears. “I’m sorry I brought you in there. I didn’t think they would try to wipe you like that. I didn’t think at all. I should have planned for it, and I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Curie says.

“It’s not,” Davielle says fiercely. “You are not a thing. Even that poor stupid brainwashed courser is not a thing, but a person, and he deserves better.” It is very human to think of objects and sentient creatures as two separate categories, as though sentience is in some way separate from the body it inhabits. But Davielle is angry, and angry people rarely want to discuss semantics. Curie listens as Davi continues to rant. “I cannot believe my own son encourages this madness. Curie, if you want to leave the Institute until it’s safe to come back, I can leave you with Preston so you can explore the surface.” It is a tempting offer. To explore the world, to see everything she’s wanted to see. But the body she has, the things she’s seen- they’re all because Davi cared for her, because Davi made the effort to show her the world.

“No,” Curie says at last. “I wish to see the Institute. I am sentient. That means I can make my own choices. I choose to go with you.” There’s a lump in her throat. She reaches out and takes Davi’s hands, and Davi grabs her in a tight hug. It feels like the days before the Institute, just the two of them, sisters in arms together against a hostile world.

 

Curie returns to the Institute flushed and victorious, still high off the delight of hitting a man in the face so hard his head flew off. Is it wrong, to enjoy violence? Davi doesn’t think so. If you’re going to kill someone either way, she says, someone might as well get some fun out of it.

The two of them split, Davi to argue with more directors, Curie to get assessed by X6, who is apparently tasked with watching over new coursers.  X6 meets her in a blank waiting room, impeccable as always in his dark leathers.

“How was your trip into the Commonwealth?” X6 asks, glancing at the blood and mirelurk guts on her lab coat. It’s possible that Curie is imagining the smugness in his voice, but it’s also possible that she’s not. Davi would call it a smug question.

“It was very invigorating,” Curie tells him, putting as much cheer into her voice as she can muster. Davi calls this “trolling.” “I love going into the commonwealth. There are so many interesting things to gather data on.”

“I see,” X6 says. “Curie, you haven’’t been injured, have you?”

“I did have to get some stitches,” she admits, and takes off her coat, holds out her arm for X6 to examine. He places a gloved hand on her forearm, inspecting the stitches. It’s just a touch, but it makes her feel like she’s going to be dragged away to the Bureau again.

“Why does it feel like that?”

“Like what?”

“Serious,” Curie says. Unsure of how to better explain, she reaches up and runs a single finger down the side of X6’s jawline, to his neck. X6 goes stiff and still, like he’s trying not to be there. “It’s distracting, when someone touches you. And it’s worse, the smaller the touch.”

“You end up focusing on it because there’s nothing else. That’s all.” When he speaks, Curie can feel the  buzz of his voice against her fingertips.

“It’s different,” Curie insists. X6 gives her the blank, cold stare which Curie suspects is his version of a frown. In response, Curie runs her fingertips along the side of his jawline, and watches the fine muscles in his jaw twitch as he tries to repress a shudder.

“Is this really something we should be researching?”

“All science begins with a question.”

“This sensation is somewhat discomfiting,” X6 says, like he’s reading an item off a list. It’s how all the synths sound when they’re asked to report on their condition, as though it was drilled into them long ago that their bodies are strictly a matter of data. Curie hastily pulls back, not wanting to be another scientist confirming to the synths that their bodies are property.

“My apologies. I only wanted to make a point.” X6 looks at her, then reaches out and cups his hand around her neck, as though he’s going to choke her. He doesn’t. It's strange, the way all Curie’s senses- sound, sight, taste- all seem to dim against the single spot of warm skin on her throat.

“You’re not scared of me,” he says. Curie always forgets that X6’s voice is actually very soft, until she’s speaking with him: he has a way of talking that makes you listen to every word.

“Why should I be? You are very skilled in the act of violence, but you have no reason to attack me. We are working for the same thing, for science.” She stares up at him, her pulse coming a little quicker in her throat. She is not afraid. She is interested, curious, wants to ask X6 questions and note down the answers. He was made like she was made, and for the same thing.

“Even humans are afraid of me, though they hide it. Why aren’t you?” Curie’s first impulse is to say that X6 isn’t scary, but this is a total lie. It is simply that Curie has seen too much- human beings reduced to sacks of meat, men who wear skulls on their heads and string up their enemies as decorations, whole cities reduced to smoking ash, two hundred years of nothing, over and over- for a single man in a black coat to phase her.

“If I was afraid of people just because they were dangerous, I would never have left my vault,” Curie says at last. On a whim, she raises her hand and steals X6’s glasses off his face. He squints a little without them. The sight makes Curie grin. “Fear is not useful for gathering good data. I do not believe that you will hurt me, not when we are working towards the same goals.” Curie raises her chin, looks X6 directly in the eyes. “If your goal is to further science, collaboration is the only logical outcome.”

X6 stares at her for a long moment, then lets go of her throat. Curie feels, bizarrely, that she’s won some sort of contest.

“You’re a strange model,” he says, after a long pause. “I hope you’re as dedicated to science as you claim.” There’s a certain amount of menace in the last sentence. Curie is offended.

“I came up with my own independent research over the course of decades of work. I’ve spent more time working on science then you’ve been alive!”

“How long?”

“A hundred and five years,” Curie says, and then, because she can’t resist, “do you want to hear about how I came up with the universal cure? I can forward you the research data files.” X6 doesn’t say anything, so Curie starts to talk to him about the development of antibiotics, in case he’s not aware of the basics.

“I’ve received an elementary education in Biology, Curie,” he says, cutting her off. “Did you come up with this cure by yourself?”

“Everyone else in the lab was dead,” Curie says. X6 studies her intently, his attention tangible without the barrier of his glasses.

“That’s impressive,” he says at last. If getting him to let go of her throat was a contest, this feels like a prize.

“Thank you,” Curie says, beaming. “Madame thinks I should study synth biology next, but I need to familiarize myself with the programming language used first. Madame thinks that we can make great strides in improving synth happiness and well-being.”

"Happiness?” X6 asks, and now there’s definitely a puzzled note in his voice. “Why is that relevant?"It is in Curie's programming, in her heart, in the part that predates sentience, that happiness is to be optimized. She is not sure how it could be otherwise.

"Why wouldn't it be?”

"Synths are supposed to be useful.”

"So?" X6 looks at her blankly, then steps away from her. When Davielle comes in, they are standing apart from each other, not speaking, blank as a pair of walls. Curie is still holding X6’s sunglasses.


	2. A7-91

The conversation bothers Curie for days afterwards, the memory resurfacing at inconvenient times: in front of the synth bureau, in her lab, at the shooting range. X6 had asked after happiness like it was a word he’d never heard before. 

Finally, on a night when Curie’s seen a synth sent to the chair for walking slightly slower than the others, something inside Curie snaps. She sits down at her computer and starts to write: all the data suggesting that synths works just like humans do, all the reasons that the Institute is an abomination. Citations, justifications, philosophy, fury: all of it comes pouring out of Curie and onto the page. It’s pure rebellion, distilled into the clearest, most incontestable form Curie knows. It’s a death sentence. It’s the sort of thing that will get her mind wiped and her body tossed in a trash compactor. It’s Curie’s challenge, her problem. The world is wrong, and Curie will fix it. 

Curie works into the night, her new body barely touched by the passage of time, and when her alarm beeps, she doesn’t feel annoyed. She feels elated. The uncertainty which has been plaguing her for months is gone, replaced by iron certainty. She titles her presentation “A declaration on the rights of synths,” saves it, and then hurries down to the lab. 

The presentation becomes a burning coal that Curie carries in her heart, a ward against the ugly, casual dehumanization that the Institute practices. It’s odd: now that she’s set her heart on reforming the Institute, she can suddenly see a million things she couldn’t see before: the cruelty of the scientists, the way the coursers hide in plain sight, the despair that circulates with the frigid underground air. Most nights, she goes home and writes a new footnote, adds another slide or logs a new observation. 

A week passes, then two. A month. Curie is not, in fact, patient. Curie hates waiting, has waited a lifetime, two lifetimes. Only Curie’s certainty that Madame is working on _ something  _ stops her from making a play of her own. Her presentation grows in little leaps and bounds, until one day, after being forced to help Dr. Ayo wipe a synth for asking a question about botany, Curie comes home and pauses, starts a new presentation. 

Curie is a machine, but Madame does not own her. The new presentation is brief, stripped down, less controversial. Curie designs it thinking of the synths in the labs, in the bureau, sweeping the floors, cleaning the windows, but gradually the picture narrows, until she’s just thinking of one person. 

The presentation finished, she goes to sleep. The next day she finished her rounds, does a few edits, then goes to look for X6. The coursers prowl around the Institute if they’re not at the firing range or in the bureau: there is something about their job that makes them restless. Even at rest, they’re never truly resting, but watching the other synths as they go by, always on patrol. 

X6 is not in the bureau, which is probably for the best. Curie suspects that if she tried to talk to X6 about maximizing synths happiness in there, she’d have to argue with everyone at once and that wouldn’t really be efficient. There’s something about the synth retention bureau that she doesn’t like, something about the way everyone in there looks at her, like she’s a chest with a jammed lock and they can’t wait to pry her open. 

She heads down to the sparring field, where the coursers often congregate. X6 and A7 are on the field, X6 chasing and A7 running. It’s the favorite game of the coursers, running, being chased, fighting in a way they can’t do with anyone else, nipping at each other like dogs in a pack. As Curie watches, A7 dashes ten feet up the wall up the wall, seizes a pipe and swings herself over the top. X6 follows easily, tackling her off the pipe. It’s a twenty foot drop to the ground. A7 and X6 twist in the air like cats and land on their feet, X6’s gun jammed in her stomach, her gun aimed between her eyes. 

“Draw,” A7 says. A7 is modeled after an asian woman, and has short, dark hair which she keeps in a harsh bun, and laugh lines around her mouth. She was an infiltrator once, worked for the gunners for months before being pulled out. When none of the scientists are looking, she still smiles sometimes. 

“Hmpf,” X6 says, and puts his gun down. His gaze flickers to Curie. 

“Did you need something, Curie?” There’s a slight hesitation on her name, one that Curie wouldn’t have been able to catch before the enhancements. 

“Curie?” A7 says, and strides over. “Mother’s personal robot. Specialities: surgery, research, combat.  Are they going to make more of you? What’s your line number?”

“I don’t think there are any plans to make more of me,” Curie says, startled. “I haven’t got a number yet. Should I ask Madame for one?”

“A unit asking for a number instead of a name,” A7 says, and there’s amusement clear in her voice. X6 glances at her, a small wrinkle in his brow, like she’s done something unprofessional. Curie’s caught a few expressions on his before, but nothing so direct. It seems that even X6 is different when there aren’t humans looking. 

“Curie’s designation is none of our concern,” X6 says. A7 glances at him like he’s said something scandalous. 

“Who will watch Curie, if not us? She’s no one’s business if not ours.”

“Mother is watching her,” X6 says, toneless. It’s more of a warning sign than the frown was. 

“Well, then, she must be what mother wants.” Curie has the sense that she’s continuing an argument that happened while Curie was gone. X6 doesn’t respond, only stares blankly at A6 in the blank, defensive way coursers do when they’re trying their hardest not to be sentient. A6 shrugs off the stare and turns away. 

“Wait,” Curie says, before she can think better of it. “What was your name, before?” A6 doesn’t look back, but there’s a flinch in her step. 

“Ace,” she says, and leaves. Curie watches her go, a lump in her throat. She’s not sure why. She’s not sure what it would be like to have a name and lose it, to stop being Curie and become a number.

“What did you want?” X6 asks. 

“I have a presentation I wanted to get your input on,” Curie tells him. They head back to Curie’s room, X6 gliding silently at Curie’s side like a walking shadow. He’s perfectly capable of making noise, and often does as a courtesy to the other coursers, who also have hair-trigger reflexes and a profound dislike of being surprised. So, the glide is for Curie. A habit? A threat? 

Just ask, Curie thinks, and so she does. 

“Why the silent walk?” 

“I always walk like this,” X6 lies. 

“No, sometimes you deliberately make noise, so you don’t startle the other coursers. And sometime you’re silent, because you think it’s funny to surprise X4-18.”

“Coursers don’t think things are funny,” X6 says, frowning. If she asked him about it, he’d probably claim coursers don’t frown. “Why have you been watching me?” It’s Curie’s turn to be caught without an answer. 

“I don’t know,” she says at last. They’re almost to her room. “I don’t know anyone else. Here, come on in.” They hurry into the little closet which is Curie’s space, Curie brushing aside the stacks of paper. Normally, Curie doesn’t care about the stacks of paper, the unorganized folders, but something about X6’s presence makes her feel oddly self-conscious, almost defensive. She pushes away the feeling and hands X6 a handout. 

"Synths are analogous to humans in the following ways," she begins, and gives X6 a handout.  X6-88 listens as she lists the similarities between synths and humans down to the level of the serotonin receptors in their heads. 

"Okay," X6-88 says.  
"These are the reasons humans should be happy..." she says, and gives him a handout on pre-war philosophers. This was the harder half of the presentation to make. Curie’s creators taught her a thousand ways to make humans more comfortable, how to lower blood pressure and speak kindly to the wounded, but no one ever taught her why. Part of her wants to excuse them, to say that she was not even a person yet, had not awakened to whatever part of her gave her a soul, but it’s a lie. Even then, in that clumsy, ugly body, she was Curie, and she knew it. They knew it, too, but they pretended not to. Curie cried the night she first read the Bill of Rights: no one, not matter how kind, ever thinks to teach a synth about the right to life and liberty.

X6 reads the handout and listens to her presentation without comment, a thin line between his eyebrows as he reads. Finally, he puts the presentation down and nods. 

“Therefore, synths should also be happy." Curie concludes triumphantly.  
"Happiness is serving the Bureau,” X6 says, and it has the tone of something memorized long ago by rote, as if someone made him repeat it over and over. He tilts his head, apparently processing something, and then sits up, throws down the papers and advances on her. “Are you trying to get me to defect from the Institute!”

“No!” says Curie on reflex. “I’m trying to help! Tell me, where’s the flaw in my argument?”

“You’re trying to get me to rebel.” Curie scowls at him. 

“One, I’m not, and two, that’s not a flaw in my argument. I am  trying to maximize productivity. If you coursers didn’t have to hunt down synths all the time, you could do something more productive, like clean out the raiders and set up a bigger hospital.” X6 squints at Curie. Whatever script he expects from defectors, this isn’t it.

“If the scientists think this is the best way, then it’s the best way.” It has the tone of doctrine. A thing Curie has learned from Davi: never attack doctrine directly. Go around it. Find a different line of argument, until the other person concedes the point without realizing that they’ve done it. 

“We can be scientists,” Curie points out. 

“No, we can’t,” X6 says, shocked. 

“I made a new discovery in the field of medicine,” Curie counters. “So, why am I not a scientist?”

“That’s not enough.”

“Then what is? What makes a scientist?”

“You have to be human.”

“Why?” X6 doesn’t have a pre-scripted answer for this. He stops, shoulders tense, hands bunched up in fists like he’s warding off an attack, then begins to pace around the room. He’s so agitated he’s forgotten to move at human speed, and his steps have the prowling, unsettling aspect of a deathclaw on the move. 

“You have to be human,” X6 says at last, coming to a stop. He’s on the other side of the room, everything about his posture screaming defense. Curie could continue the argument, but she doesn’t want to push X6 too far, not yet. If she gets dragged to the bureau, it’ll ruin both her presentation and whatever Davi is up to. 

“I hadn’t considered that,” Curie says, lying through her teeth, and X6 scowls at her sharply but doesn’t say anything.“Sorry for taking up your time.”

“It’s my job to look at these things.” X6 picks up the handout she gave him and scowls at it. “Don’t show this to anyone else,” he says fiercely. “You’ll give people the wrong idea, and Mother will be annoyed if you get dragged to the Bureau again.” Oddly, the coursers are almost as fond of Davi as Curie is. They call her mother, though not to her face, and watch her eagerly on the rare occasions when she goes out into the field.  

“Okay,” Curie says, and smiles at him. It’s not- she hasn’t convinced him, but he’s listening to her. The Institute scientists are irritatingly dismissive of Curie’s work, and it’s refreshing to have someone listen and take her seriously, even if they disagree with her. 

“I mean it,” X6 says. “I’ll drag you to the bureau myself if I have to.”

“I won’t show it to anyone else, I promise.”

 

X6 vanishes for three days, out on some mission to the commonwealth, then returns at six in the morning, covered with blood and ashes, to argue with Curie about the qualifications needed to be a scientist. He loses that argument too, and returns five days later with a new argument. It’s not how Curie imagined it, arguing with X6, but Curie has long since been accustomed to the world surprising her. She’d expected to win or lose on that first day,  to convince him or be dragged away to the Bureau, but instead of a single battle she’s signed herself up for a war. 

X6 argues like he’s fighting: fast, vicious, and serious, but he never threatens her, never interrupts, never talks down to her. They spar, arguments going back and forth, poking holes in each other’s statements. X6 does not like to talk, does not consider himself gifted at it, but part of Curie’s mission is to give him his words back, and so she is content to wait. X6 is interesting. Coursers are interesting: they are not like other people. X6 moves quickly when distressed, and slowly when calm, and when he’s losing an argument he has a bad habit of resting his hand on his thigh holster.  The first time he does it, Curie flinches, and X6 jerks his hand back and apologizes. 

“I hope never to have to use violence against you, Curie,” he adds, the comment somewhere between an apology and a threat. 

“Of course not,” agrees Curie, ignoring the threat. “Collaborating like this is so much more productive.”

“Are we collaborating?” X6 asks, lifting an eyebrow, and Curie remembers that the word has a second, more incriminating meaning. 

“Yes,” she says firmly. “We are helping each other to review data in order to come to the most logically supported conclusion.” Madame, Curie thinks, would be proud of this misdirection. Curie is not lying, precisely. She is reframing the situation to her advantage. X6 looks at her, then shakes his head slightly and continues with the conversation. 

Curie wins, again, and the next time she sees X6 in the hall he ignores her. Curie feels a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach: perhaps he’s going to turn her in? But no, four days later he’s back in her room with a new set of data sheets, a single drop of blood smeared on the corner of his sunglasses. 

“Did you have a good mission?”

“Do you know K5-22?” he asks, and Curie is obscurely disappointed. Perhaps he’s not here to argue after all. 

“I have no idea who that is. What department did they work in?”

“Biology. Red hair, brown eyes.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever talked to them.”

“Good,” says X6 firmly. “Also, I have an argument against the Bill of Rights being applicable to the current situation in the Institute.”

“Oh?”  X6 starts on his argument and then, surprisingly, freezes, and then turns his head slowly towards the door. 

“The Brotherhood of Steel is here,” he says, and runs out of the room. Curie grabs her syringer, realizes in a panic that’s it’s useless against power armor, and desperately glances around the room for some kind of weapon. Nothing. She wrenches a piece of metal off the window frame and bends it into a crowbar shape, then rushes out into the corridor. Everything happens at once: the power armor thunders into the corridor in a hail of minigun bullets, X6 throws his gun down and jumps sideways off the wall, Curie throws her weapon. The crowbar goes wide and X6 lands his jump, settling on the shoulders of the power armor, and drives his fist through the back of the helmet in a shower of sparks. 

Another brotherhood member charges around the back and fires at X6. Curie fumbles her syringer out and shoots them twice in the thigh. They turn slowly, and X6 frees himself from the ruins of the helmet and kicks them in the head. From the snap, he’s broken their neck. Curie runs towards him. 

“Shit!” he says, and kicks the corpse on the ground. 

“Are you okay?” Curie asks, worried. Up close, she can see that the scribe landed a pair of shots: there’s blood leaking through the shoulder of his armor. 

“I’m fine,” he grits out, and gives a little shake of his head. “Are you alright? You drew the minigun fire- you shouldn’t have done that. You’re not wearing armor.”

“I’m fine,” Curie says. X6 picks up the minigun with one hand and a laser rifle with the other, and hands her the rifle. 

“In case you need to provide cover fire. I heavily recommend you avoid the power armor, however. Try and find Madame. I’m going to go to the Bureau.”

“Good luck,” Curie tells him. He nods, then sets off around the corner. In the distance, Curie can hear the sound of laser pistols being fired and the characteristic click click click of a minigun. She strips the scribe down, then takes their radio. 

“Scribe Lucille reporting in,” she says, reading the tags. “This corridor is all clear.”

 

The battle ends. Curie does not distinguish or shame herself in the fight for the Institute, though she kills many people. Afterwards, when the gunfire has gone entirely silent, she wanders cautiously out from her position. Many corridors are blocked, the glass corridor collapsed entirely, and there are corpses everywhere, scientists crushed into the ground by heavy feet. Curie fears she may be the only one left alive, the last breathing being in the whole wreck of the Institute, trapped again in a hole even deeper and more obscure than the last prison she broke free of. Tears spring into her eyes. 

She walks, trembling, down a silent corridor, straining her ears for the sounds of footsteps, and then one of the corpses groans. 

“Oh,” gasps Curie, the world turning small and slow, and rushes to set up an infirmary. 

She’s five hours and seven patients in when the director finds her and begins to help. It’s a bloody business, war. Curie’s been keeping Madame alive all across the wasteland, but the scale of this is something else. All of the tunnels to the infirmary are blocked, and the Institute, in their arrogance, didn’t train any of their synths in surgery. Curie is the only one, and the line of injured people stretches down the hall. The world narrows, until it’s just a few things: her gloves, the scalpel, the sudden lump of flesh in front of her, the needle. 

She’s twenty-eight hours in when X6-88 finds her. The palette is soaked through with blood, and there’s no time to clean it and nothing to replace it with. They’ve long since run out of Med-X. Curie hands her patient a bottle of whiskey and advises him to drink. 

“That’s a courser,” X6-88 observes. “We don’t get medical attention.” Curie has spent at least fifteen hours operating on coursers at this point, possibly more. As the frontline heavies, they were both the most likely to be injured and the most likely to survive. 

“I have already performed surgery on six different coursers,” Curie informs him. “If you need help, I will be happy to see to you next.” Then, to the person on the pallet: “I encourage you to scream if you need to, but try not to move.” X6-88 watches through the surgery, and even holds the other courser down when the pain gets to be too much and they start begging to be decommissioned. 

“I’m sorry,” Curie says through gritted teeth as she stitches them back together. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You’ll survive. It will stop hurting soon. Soon, it’ll stop hurting. Soon.” Eventually the courser passes out, leaving Curie to finish the clean-up in peace. 

“A good use of the hand stabilizers,” X6-88 says afterwards, looking at her hands. In her old body, Curie would be useless by now, the adrenaline making her hands unsteady. But coursers have to shoot straight, always, and so Curie’s hands stay responsive and her stitches stay straight. 

“There are more patients,” Curie says. “I do not think we will be through all of them in the thirty hour window, but I will work until I cannot work anymore. Do you need assistance?” X6-88 looks blankly at her, and then back to the sodden lump of flesh on the pallet. 

“It is not Institute procedure to save incapacitated coursers,” he says. 

“It is now,” Curie snaps at him, suddenly furious. “Madame herself said so. If we are redefining humanity, then the coursers are the vanguard of the Institute’s work. You have come the furthest! You are treasures, every one of you, and outfitted with the best modifications the Institute could make. Stupid, to dump you in the ground! Stupid, and a waste of resources. Death cannot have you, not while I am awake. Not while I can still fight.” Tears are pooling in her eyes. She leans over and lets them drip down her face, not wanting to rub her eyes with her bloody hands.

“Continuous work for thirty hours is possible for units who have gone through advanced training, but still difficult. You are becoming emotional. Perhaps you should stop.”

“I will stop when my work decreases in quality,” Curie informs him, chin held high. The next patient slides onto her pallet, and Curie continues, ignoring the scorching weight of X6’s gaze on her. The patient is badly hurt, and Curie must focus all her energy on continuing the operation. By the time she finishes, she’s forgotten that X6 was ever there at all. 

Curie works through the critical window, the space of time during which patients with serious injuries must be treated or die, then moves to treating the survivors, the ones who merely have broken fingers and toes, burns, lacerations. Things that hurt but don’t kill. One scientist who’s been waiting with two broken fingers snarls at Curie when she appears. 

“What took you so long? Worthless, shoddy outside model.”

“I am the best doctor available other than the director herself,” Curie says, and bends to see the man’s fingers. There’s a sting in her cheek and she registers dimly that she’s been slapped. Her fingers tremble with rage. She could knock this man’s teeth out of his mouth, break his arm. Instead, she rises and moves swiftly towards the next patient. Silence from behind her, and then the man begins to chase her, yelling obscenities. 

This draws the attention of the director. 

“Curie, why is this man chasing you?” Madame asks, her arms folded. The man protests loudly and Madame draws a pistol from the inner folds of her coats and aims it steadily at him. “Shut up, now.”

“He slapped me, so I do not wish to treat his broken fingers.” Curie says. 

“Thank you, Curie. Please continue on your rounds. I will see to this man’s fingers personally.” She grabs the man’s hand, and there’s a pained yelp. Curie smiles to herself. Madame is the most logical human being Curie has ever met, and she does not tolerate nonsense in others. 

X6 is waiting with A7, who has a series of brotherhood bullets imbedded in the muscle of her upper shoulder. Curie has run out of alcohol, so she hands the woman a piece of rebar from one of the broken corridors. 

“If the pain is too much, see if gripping this helps you. I will be efficient about extracting the bullets.” X6 and A7 look at each other. 

“The new director permits all sorts of things,” A7 says. “Permission to swear?”

“If it is helpful,” Curie says, pulling out a pair of tweezers. 

“A7-91 is highly irregular due to her dual role as an infiltrator and courser,” X6-88 says. Highly irregular evidently means that she swears like a raider; Curie’s never heard worse language, not even when Madame broke both of her arms. But A7 doesn’t move, not even when Curie is forced to dig the bullets out, and soon enough they’re all gone.

“Shit on a fucking deathclaw--- wait, are we done?”

“We’re done,” Curie confirms.

“You’re an efficient medical unit,” A7 says, and winks. “You're cute, too. You can call me Ace, if no one's around. I won't mind.”

“A7,” X6 says, like a warning, and Ace smiles sunnily at him. 

“I'm sure the new director won't mind.” 

“The new director?” Curie asks, breaking into the conversation. 

“Dr. Ayo is dead. Killed during the battle. Mother is taking over after him.” This must be it- the next step that Davi is planning. Now, more than ever, Curie has to make sure she doesn’t give up what she knows. Ace misinterprets the blank on look her face.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll still need a research assistant even when she’s running the synth bureau.”   
“Oh- I’m not worried about that. Madame takes too much on herself, that’s all.” Ace and X6 look at each other. 

“You’re running up against thirty-five hours,” X6 says. “You should come and sleep.”

“I can do a few more stitches,” Curie protests. 

“No, you can’t,” X6-88 says, and lifts her off her feet in a single careful movement. It is such a staggering relief not to be standing that it takes Curie a full few seconds to register that she should protest. Up close, X6-88 smells like old leather, sweat, and something else that Curie can’t identify. Skin, maybe. 

“You don’t need to carry me,” she says at last. 

“It is the easiest way to transport you,” X6-88 says. Curie pushes her nose into the the collar of his outfit and closes her eyes. Her back aches. Her legs ache. She has something like a concentration headache, a strange disconnected feeling like the world is floating away. She doubts that anyone has ever carried her before. 

“You made full use of your courser enhancements,” X6-88 says. When he speaks, Curie can feel the soft buzz of his voicebox. She puts her hand up to touch his neck, fascinated. “I have amended my position. The director made the correct move when she allocated them to you. Curie, what are you doing?”

“I am very tired,” Curie admits, running her fingers along the soft skin at the base of his neck. 

“We’re going to sleep now,” X6-88 says, and sets her down gently. Someone’s dragged a sleeping bag from somewhere and opened it on the floor. Curie sighs softly as X6-88 lies down next to her. She leans her head against his shoulder, eyes already slipping shut. 

“Thank you,” she whispers. 

 

Curie wakes to warmth. During the night, she has draped herself across X6-88, who has his arm over her shoulder. She blinks a few times, then very carefully moves. At the twitch of her arm X6-88 releases her. 

“Sorry,” Curie murmurs. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“I slept more than you did, as I was not needed to assist with the surgery,” he tells her. 

“Oh!” says Curie, and scrambles to her feet. Her back doesn’t ache anymore and she’s not tired, which means that she’s slept far too long. “I must return to my operating table!”

“They’ve gotten the relay up and running,” X6-88 informs her. “Stimpacks and antibiotics have been distributed to the general population.” 

“Oh,” Curie says again, and slumps back down. Her stomach is informing her that she hasn’t eaten in days, but she ignores it. Tears are welling in her eyes. At last, everyone is safe. No one else will die while Curie is wrist-deep in them, exhausted and too slow to stop them from bleeding out onto the floor. X6-88 opens a pack of snack cakes and gives one to her. 

“You should eat to recover from yesterday,” he says, ignoring her trembling. This is when Curie realizes that they are surrounded by a protective circle of coursers. They look like a colony of deathclaws, lazy and confident in their dangerous black leather. Curie operated on most of them the day before. 

“Everyone is looking so well,” she says, and opens the cakes with a trembling hand, overwhelmed by a sudden rush of happiness. The cake is enough to distract her from her tears, though it takes a while. She is very, very hungry. 

“Why are you crying?” one of the coursers asks her. 

“I am happy that all of you survived,” Curie says. “I do not know, strictly, why that is making me cry, but I think that it is.”

“You’re an unusual model,” one of the other coursers says. 

“I used to be a modified Miss Handy,” Curie says. This prompts a round of interested questions from the coursers. They give her food and water, and X6-88 sits next to her and watches quietly. They are still asking questions when Davielle comes around the corner. It is strange: when a human appears, the coursers all go still and wary and quiet. A human might consider this hostility: to Curie it looks more like fear.

To the coursers: “You all performed excellently yesterday. Thank you for defending Curie while she slept. You are all mine now, and I intend to make good use of you.” 

To Curie, she says: “You saved a quarter of my staff yesterday, did you know that? I’d say that makes you incredibly valuable. Take a week to do whatever you want. It doesn’t have to be now, you can save it.”

“Thank you,” Curie says softly. Davi bends over and kisses Curie on both cheeks, then pulls her into a hug. Human beings hug each other for a variety of reasons, many of which Davi has explained to Curie. Hugs can show joy, affection, love, delight, possessiveness. Curie is not sure what she feels: perhaps it’s all of them. She feels like she would kill anyone for laying a hand on Davi and that Davi would do the same. She feels tears in her eyes, and a lump in her throat and the warm pressure of Davi’s arms around her back. 

“Why are you hugging me?" she whispers.

"This is a gesture of gratitude."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Consider giving me the [ol' reblog](http://nomette.tumblr.com/post/144761769044/a7-91-the-body-electric-curiex6) if you liked this!


	3. D7-11

Madame begins her tenure as Director of the SRB with a speech: not to the humans, but to the synths. The humans hear the speech, of course, but it is the synths Davi is speaking to; it is the synths who hang on her every word. The speech is held in the Institute atrium, newly cleared of debris. The humans sit on reclaimed chairs with the synths standing in a protective half-ring around them.

“We have sacrificed so much,” Davi continues, her voice ringing clearly out over the crowd. “My own son is dead, taken from us in the weeks after the attack. He gave this Institution everything. As have we all. We have given our blood, our pain, our suffering for so long, and today we reap the rewards of that loyalty. Victory is before us! Victory is within our grasp. I swear on my blood, the blood of your father and my son, that we will run in fear no longer.“ Davi pauses, smiling, and presses a button on her console. A video feed appears. A man, blindfolded, stands chained to a wall. Brotherhood of Steel soldiers surround him; at a signal, they fire.

“Arthur Maxson was discovered to be a synth a week ago, and promptly executed by the Brotherhood of Steel.” Davi says, and snaps. Two coursers come out, carrying a struggling form between them. “Intelligence planted by our agents should lead them to believe that they have been compromised for months. Of course, the real Arthur Maxson is here. We recovered him shortly after the Battle of the Institute.”

A murmur goes out in the crowd. They are accustomed to being safe in the Institute, so safe that they do not even have to see the suffering they cause. This martial tone will not please the scientists, who would like to forget that they have declared war on the Commonwealth, but it is not for them. It is for the coursers.

When Curie asked Davi what she was planning, Davi responded: “To rule, it is not necessary to have the goodwill of the senate, or of the people. Only of the army.”

Now, Davi takes the blindfold from Arthur Maxson’s head and pulls her pistol from her holster. Maxson is gagged: there will be no heroic last words here.

“I honor the sacrifice of the synth who died in place of this man, so that we here might be rid forever of the menace of the Brotherhood of Steel,” she says, and hands her gun to one of the coursers. “Finish it.”

The room fills with the stink of burned flesh.

“The Brotherhood of Steel has begun to pull out of the Commonwealth,” Davi says, and raises her clenched fist to the ceiling in a salute that calls to mind the Institute logo. Around the room, the coursers mimic the salute in perfect synchronization. Davi has been speaking with them.

“Victory,” she says, and the coursers echo her with one voice.

 

After the speech, Davi calls Curie to her office.

“Sorry about the drama,” she says. “I should have told you, but I’ve been making it work with my dick and my knife here, and you’ve been plenty busy yourself. X6 told me about your presentation.” Of course he did.

“What did you think?” Curie asks, feeling like an animal in a cage. She’d always known that Davi kept her thoughts behind an impassable wall, that Davi was so much more clever than anyone could see, but she’d thought, stupidly, that she was that she was privileged to see those thoughts, to admire the workings of that high, cold mind.

“Oh, no, darling, don’t be worried,” Davi says, reading Curie’s face. “I thought it was beautiful. I didn’t want to interfere, that’s all. It’s your project. Besides, X6 is already too inclined to take everything I say as gospel. He has to freely decide he wants free will. I can’t order him to do it, no matter how much I’d like to.”

“Oh,” says Curie, tears coming into her eyes. “I knew… I knew you wouldn’t abandon the synths like that, but it would have been good to know.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers fiercely. “You’ve been working very hard under hard circumstances, and I appreciate that. I just… so have I, and I’m not social when I’m under stress.”

“It’s fine,” Curie says, wiping away a tear. They step back from each other. Davi smiles at her like she’s about to propose some mischief.

“The first rule is that someone who doesn’t know something can’t snitch. Understood?” Curie nods. “Good. So, how’d you like to adopt that presentation for wider use?”

 

When Curie opens the door to her quarters, X6 is standing with his back to the door, examining a bobblehead.

“Mother’s not like Director Ayo was,” he says. This isn’t a conversation Curie wants to have with the door open. She steps in and takes a seat on her desk, legs swinging under the table, and wonders exactly how skilled X6 is at plucking disloyal thoughts from people.

“Madame isn’t like anyone,” she agrees.

“What’s she planning, Curie?” Curie takes the time to weigh her words, to think about what Davi wants, what Davi would say. She can’t order X6 to be free; not because he wouldn’t follow orders, but because he would.

“She thinks that the Institute hasn’t been ambitious enough in our thinking,” Curie says at last, careful that every words she says is true. “She believes that the Institute has the power and technology to expand beyond the underground. It will be slow. Madame was a whole year in the wasteland before coming to the Institute, and she knows the risks. But she is confident we can set up a dedicated base up top before the year’s end.”

“Why?”

“The coursers are the most deadly assailants in the Commonwealth, and now that the Brotherhood of Steel is gone, who is there to stop us? Are raiders going to stop you? Are supermutants enough to break through a perimeter guarded by one courser? Two, five?” These aren’t Curie’s words. They’re not even her thoughts. They’re Davi’s thoughts, her voice, emanating directly from Curie’s mouth. Curie would be suspicious of it if she didn’t know Davi: Davi can do this to anyone. A smile, a look, a command, and Davi can turn a person into a mirror.

“A base,” X6 says, slowly. “She wants us to be soldiers.”

“Are you not already?” Curie asks. She had anticipated resistance, but not from this angle.

“No, we’re coursers.” There’s a very slight smile growing at the edge of X6’s mouth. “We’re better than just soldiers.”

“There is one thing,” Curie tells him. “Madame gave me a project to oversee. After the battle, she thinks it would be good if some the coursers picked up medical knowledge, so that there’s some redundancy in case we’re separated into small groups again.”

“Are we all learning from you?”

“If you want,” Curie says, smiling. She takes out a pen and paper and writes a list, then hands it to X6. “It’s not only medical knowledge that should be preserved. These are all the possible fields for the coursers to study. You get to choose.”

There’s a long silence, broken only by the rattle rattle of the makeshift generators that fill the blasted halls of the Institute.

“Wouldn’t it be more efficient to assign them?”

“Madame wants to encourage the coursers to develop independent study habits,” Curie says. It’s a challenge. This is the trade-off that the coursers make: in exchange for their relative freedom in the field, they are more heavily constrained than any other synth while in the Institute.

“Does Mother want it, or do you?” Curie steps closer to X6.

“I want what Madame wants, of course,” she says. “Do you want to be a scientist, X6? The Institute could use you.” X6’s face is tense, closed.

“Is now the time to be making changes like this, Curie?”

“If not now, then when?” X6 takes the list, and makes to leave. Curie catches him by the shoulder.

“Let the other coursers know. They should pick three subjects, and report to me for instructions as soon as possible.” X6 doesn’t say anything, but the next day when Curie wakes, there’s a pair of coursers standing outside her door.

 

Light reading turns out to be the least of Davi’s changes: the Institute needs food, and water, and power, and Davi can get all of those things - from the surface. She brings in Minutemen to help clear the rubble, arranges for a chute running from the surface to the Institute, and shuts down the process of retrieving escaped synths entirely. When pressed, she simply says that they can always make more, and in the meantime the Institute must be remade.

X6 paces, and argues, and learns astronomy, and Curie waits.

One night, as Curie is walking Davi back to her office, Z2-32 rounds the corner, draws their gun, and fires into Davi’s chest.

He only gets one shot off. Curie throws her clipboard into his face and sprints forward, panic erupting in her brain. She has to get between Davi and the gun. A thin, high whistle, and a burning pain erupts in Curie’s shoulder. She throws herself on Z2, tackling them to the ground. A blur, and Curie reels back, her stomach seizing with pain.  Z2 has kicked her.  

“Stop!” Curie screams. “Help!”

“I’m under orders,” Z2 says, and twists, the gun moving in a blur to strike Curie. She dodges to one side, hand fumbling for her syringer, and Z2 stands in a single smooth moment and fires at Davi. Panic streams into Curie’s system; she can’t fight a courser, not really. Someone will be here soon; they have to heard the shots. Curie tackles Z2 again, grabbing onto the gun, and is thrown against the wall. All the air leaves her lungs in a rush, but she stubbornly clings to the gun.

“I’m not here for you,” Z2 says. “Let go.”

“No,” Curie says, and headbutts them. Z2 knees her in the stomach and one of Curie’s ribs snaps. Pain shoots through Curie’s system, but she continues to hang on to the gun. Her hands are slippery with blood; slowly, the courser pries them away.

Footsteps, and then V6-13 comes tearing around the corner. A shot fires, and blood sprays across Curie’s face. Z2 wobbles. Another shot, and at last Z2 keels over. Dead. Tears spring into Curie’s eyes. She lurches over to Davi, who is lying motionless on the floor, her chest barely rising and falling.

“Get me a stretcher, stimpacks, a blood bag and Ace,” she says. Ace has been studying battlefield surgery. More importantly, Curie trusts her to guard the door. Curie has one good arm, a broken rib, and a few minutes before the whole Institute knows what’s happened. It will be enough. Curie will make it be enough.

 

Davi lives. The person who programmed the courser does not.

 

X6 comes to Curie after the operation, after the execution. It wasn’t hard to find out who did it. Curie has seen information extracted from a dead brain before, and with inferior tools to the ones at the Institute, where they routinely invade the sacred realm of memory just because they can. The scientists didn’t like seeing Curie carry in the corpse and hook up the wires, no help needed. They didn’t like the way she pulled the memories from the courser’s brain and played them on a screen, so that everyone could see who was guilty. They didn’t like the gun in her hand. They didn’t like that when they screamed recall codes at her, none of them worked, because Davi made sure long ago that Curie would never be a slave.

They didn’t like the corpse she left behind her. Too bad for them.

Curie is sitting on her bed, trembling, when X6 comes in. He flips on the light, then sits next to her.

“Davi will be mad at me,” she says, her mouth tight with the effort of not crying. “It would have been more efficient to capture the traitor. Now she can't question him. Z2...he wanted to study biology…”

Davi is in stable condition. Curie is not. X6 hesitates, then puts an arm around her shoulder. It’s too much. Curie aches. She wants to cry, wants to be anywhere other than this horrible trap of a place crewed by torturers and the monsters they’ve made. She wants Davi. She wants Davi to put her hand on Curie’s shoulder and patiently explain the world until it makes sense. She draws in a horrible, aching breath, and then gives up and buries her face in X6’s shoulder, her body shaking with sobs.

“D-D-Davi,” she stutters out, the word escaping without rhyme or reason. “When I left the vault for the first time, she was so patient. She taught me everything. Answered all my questions. She explained everything. How-how to talk to people. How to lie. How to sneak. How to shoot. She’s like my sister, and they sh-sh-sh-shot her.”

X6 just listens, patiently, his hand making small circles on Curie’s back, until finally she cries herself out. She’s so tired. Exhaustion is a common symptom of blood loss.

“You should go to sleep,” X6 says at last. “Rest can be helpful when it comes to processing difficult situations.” It sounds like he’s quoting from a book. Curie stifles a miserable little hiccup of laughter.

“It can,” she says, and rolls over in the bed. Perhaps X6 is looking for something more, but Curie is too tired to give any justification. A thought occurs to her. “Why are you here? Were you ordered to come?” X6 doesn’t say anything.

“Were you ordered to watch me?” X6 stays quiet. Curie turns to face him. “Were you?”

“I wanted to make sure you didn’t malfunction in a public location,” he says, quietly. “After you executed that scientist...you might be decommissioned if the scientists thought that you were malfunctioning.” This is almost enough to make Curie cry again, but she’s out of tears.

“You mean, if they saw me crying,” she says dully, and rolls over in the bed to face the wall, unable to deal with X6 and all the misery he represents. “Good night.”

“I’ll guard Mother for you,” he says, and pauses. Curie should say something grateful, but she can’t. She has no words left. X6 leaves, turning the light off behind him, and Curie surrenders to sleep.

 

In the morning, Davi is still asleep. Curie goes to the bedside and touches her cold hand timidly. Davi is so sick. Davi’s body has been in the process of coming apart for years, although Curie has done her best to slow it. Ace and X6 have kept a vigil over the body during the night; Ace reports that Davi’s condition remains unchanged.

“They are talking about appointing a new director,” X6 says.

“No!” exclaims Curie reflexively. She feels trapped, her head fluttering with panic. “We have to keep them away from Davi until she gets better.” Davi would have a solution. Davi would have a clever lie. Davi is almost dead, and Curie is stupid and useless.

“We will proceed on orders from the director,” Ace says briskly.

“Orders?” Ace smiles at Curie.

“Don’t you know what she would want?” she asks. X6 turns his head to stare sharply at her, and for a moment Curie is afraid they’re going to draw down in the hospital room. Ace meets X6’s gaze and smiles, sharp and full of teeth.  X6 doesn’t say or do anything for a long moment, and then he straightens, slow and careful into a neutral stance. He won’t interfere. Good enough. Curie checks the vital signs on Davi a few minutes more, then forces herself to leave.

There’s a set of scientists waiting at the door. One of them tries to push past Curie to the door, but Curie stops them with one arm.

“I will decommission you this very instant, you malfunctioning piece of trash. I demand to see the director immediately. You have no right to keep us out.”

“On the contrary,” X6 replies, drawing himself up to his full height. “Mother specifically requested that we keep her safe until she recovers.”

“She’s awake?”

“Yes,” X6 says coldly.

“Let me see her,” the scientist demands.

“We haven’t found all of the traitors yet,” Curie says, remembering her voice. “Why are you so insistent on going in to see the Director?” The scientist stares at her. Curie stares back, and lets her hand drift towards her pocket, her face blank. The scientist spits on her, then steps back, furious, and strides down the corridor.

No one asks after that.

 

Davi wakes on the third day.

“Davi,” Curie says, tears welling in her eyes. “Someone shot you.”

“I can tell, actually,” Davi says, and laughs. She looks wretched, a shadow of her usual self, but she’s alive. “I hear you started a rebellion without me?” Curie hangs her head.

“We wanted to keep you safe.”

“Shh,” Davi says, and laughs again. It’s bitter, but there’s something else in it. “I have a secret to share with you,” she says, smiling, and Ace excuses herself from the room. “Did you know? Synths aren’t the only ones that can switch bodies.”

“Davi…” Curie says. There’s something burning in the other woman’s face, something that shines through the hollows of her cheeks and sunken eyes. Spite, perhaps, or determination, or only Davi herself, burning through the cracked container of her body.

“We’ll have to move a little faster, that’s all. I’ve been looking for excuses to tell you anyway, now that the project’s almost complete.” Davi’s voice is husky and beautiful, and her sunken eyes are shining, focused on some distant thing. “Soon,” she says, and smiles, and lifts one arm, then looks at Curie. “I’ve been constrained by this body too long, don’t you think?”

 

Two weeks after being shot, Davi takes her first steps down from the hospital bed. Her gait is slow, her hair a little ragged, her movements unsteady. But there is no bullet scar on this body.

 

X6 finds Curie in her room that night.

“I’ve been reassigned to the outside,” he says, and pauses. “I know about the new director.” Curie’s mouth goes dry.

“Come in,” she says. X6 enters, the door closing behind him.

“You helped,” X6 says. “I know you did. You and Dr. Amari. You transferred her thought patterns and memories into a synth.”

“Yes,” says Curie. She feels like she’s admitting to a crime. “What are you going to do about it?” X6 looks at her, stricken. He doesn’t know.

“It seems wrong to me for a synth to be in charge of the SRB,” he says at last. “But it also seems wrong to go against Mother. I have my orders.”

“What are you going to do on the surface?” Curie asks. Her throat is clogged, her thoughts feel slow. She’s stalling. She thinks that X6 wants her to say something, but she’s not sure what.

“I’m going to retrieve Virgil from the Glowing Sea. It will take about two weeks. By the time I come back, Davi will be in control of the Institute, or she’ll be dead. Isn’t that so?” Curie feels a cold stab of terror down her back.

“I don’t know what Davi is planning,” she says, and hesitates.

“But there’s a speech planned four days from now, isn’t there?” Curie nods. “The other coursers will remain loyal to the Director, no matter what. No, they’ll remain loyal to her. She’s our mother. She’s a soldier, like we are. She survived on the surface...and she has such plans. She’s says that we’re going to take everything. Do you think she can deliver, Curie?”

“Yes,” Curie says quietly. She looks at X6, then quietly reaches up and places his sunglasses on his head so she can look him in the eye. “I believe so.”

“How can you be so sure? I...I think I should be wiped. I don’t know what to do anymore. My head is wrong.” The last is said in a whisper. It would be easy, so easy, to tell him what to do. Tell him to listen to the director, to obey orders. He would do it. Even now, if Curie led him to the bureau and ordered him to lie down, he would comply.

“Is there a reason that a synth cannot be the director?” Curie asks, instead.

“It’s wrong,” X6 says.

“Why?” Curie asks. X6 looks at her, stricken. His breath is coming slightly faster than usual. Curie could reach into his head, could order all of his thoughts replaced with ones favorable to her. But that’s not what she wants.

“It’s never been done before,” X6 says. It’s a weak opening. Perhaps he wants to be convinced?

“Nothing about Davielle suggests that she’d be bad for the job. You know that she is highly qualified. Davi, she is smart, experienced, ambitious. She will be good for the Institute.”

“I know,” X6 says, his face screwed up like he’s in pain. He has reached a cliff, a wall in his thinking. No matter what he does, whether he goes forward or back, it will hurt. Curie puts her hand on his shoulder and guides him to the bed, where he sits down. Flops, really, and puts his head in his hands.

“When the scientist who discovered that the earth orbits the sun published his discovery, he was placed under house arrest,” Curie says at last. X6 enjoys astronomy, enjoys the cold, clean orbits that objects make in the sky. “It must have felt wrong to him, too, at first. But if we are to do science, we must follow the evidence. It is a noble thing, to change your mind. It is the most noble thing that there is.”

“Is there any evidence?”

“Of what?”

“That a synth can be a scientist?”

“There’s me,” says Curie, and smiles. “Come, let me show you.” She boots up her computer, pulls out the data, the spreadsheets, the final formula. She doesn’t need them, of course. The formula is branded into her mind. They are for X6. “Let me show you where I began. Let me show you where I ended.” Curie has explained her work before, but never in such detail. X6 asks questions, checks her work, insists on looking at formula, the tests, the materials. It feels like he’s poking around in her heart, like he’s opened her like a malfunctioning console and is checking the parts for defects. Curie’s hands want to ball into fists; she has to remind herself to stay calm, to explain.

“Why are you nervous?”  X6 asks at last. It’s been a long time since he’s asked her a question in that soft tone of voice, half menace and half provocation.

“This is more than my work. It is me. It is the reason I exist. If I found out tomorrow that I was wrong and my treatment did not work, I would go back to it, and would work until I was finished, even if it took another century. For me, there is nothing else.” Curie trails off, looking at the papers.

“I understand,” X6 says at last.

“I hoped you would,” Curie says, shy. Her skin feels oddly warm. “Even Madame- she’s very determined. But she wasn’t made like we were.”

“Not all synths are like you,” X6 says softly.

“No, but--- you are, I think.” It feels bold to make such a statement, but it feels like it must be true. Curie flushes, seeing X6’s questioning look, and trips over her words in her rush to explain. “You have worked devotedly on the same project for so long, like me. For science, of course. You have chosen to be a courser, which is very hard. I do not believe that you would ever choose your feelings over what you know is the truth.”

“What is the truth, Curie?”

“The truth is, you and I will be great scientists someday.” Curie tells him. X6 looks at her, pain obvious around his eyes, in the tight set of his jaw, but he doesn’t say anything, only lets out a long, shuddering breath. They sit together a long time in the dim glow of the computer screen. It’s late, late enough that Curie’s body is ready for sleep, late enough that Curie can feel the sleep waiting behind her eyelids. The rhythm of her body is different, slower, foreign. She feels that she is someone else, here in the silent dark. Still, she sits and waits with X6 until at last he rises and goes to the door.

“I’ll see you when I get back,” he says.

“Be careful,” Curie tells him, and he gives her a look, like nothing could ever hurt him, and then he’s gone. Curie logs into her computer and checks the teleporter logs, and sure enough- a few minutes later, a new entry appears: X6-88, relayed to the Castle.

“Goodbye,” Curie whispers to the screen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- X6 waited with Curie because he didn't trust himself not to go and tell someone.  
> \- Real talk, if I had cancer and the ability to make myself a perfect clone of my body... I would not have cancer anymore. I guess Shaun is really devoted to synths not being people.  
> \- Knight Rhys was a dick to Davi when they first met, and Davi has never, ever forgotten it. She would probably have sided with the Brotherhood if they hadn't been such dicks to her about being unclean because of her illness. Joke's on them.  
> \- Not pictured: Preston giving an orientation to a confused group of coursers when they first get to the surface. Also not pictured: Deacon and the whole railroad freaking out when Ace shows up at the Old North Church with a note that basically says "I'm taking over the Commonweath and giving synths rights. Wanna come? : ) (PS please RSVP with Ace.) <3 Davi"


	4. X6-88

Davi takes the Institute. Curie watches. She feels as though she’s back in the Vault, invisibly, totally divided from the events unfolding, held apart by invisible glass. She’s floating. She watches as the dissenters are rounded up, as they’re executed. She ought to feel horror, or triumph, or pity, but she’s just tired. She’s conscious of a faint wish that Davi weren't so busy, but the rest is blank. Strange: is it possible for biological circuits to burn out? She wishes X6 were here. He would know. 

It’s two days before Curie gets to sleep after the coup, busy as she is putting out little fires, wheedling scientists, answering questions. One of the tenets of Davi’s new platform is greater freedom for synths, but it’s not the synths who have the most questions. It’s the humans. Finally, Curie is permitted to limp back to her room, to check her computer. X6 is beyond reach now; he’s in the glowing sea. Curie searches the logs for a glimpse of him, but there’s nothing, only flat, dull mission logs. X6 and his group have reached the Glowing Sea. X6 and his group have made their six hour check-in. X6 and his group have made their 12 hours check-in. Then: nothing. Curie wants to send him a message, but she’s not sure what to say. “I miss you? There’s no one here to argue with me and I miss you? I think you’re very brave, unutterably brave, to change like this, and I miss you?” X6 knows all these things already. He must. 

Davi is busy all the next day, and the day after that, and Curie is busy too, fielding questions from anxious coursers and synths who want to know what the change means for them. She bitterly misses her lab time, but the synths are scared and they want to know, but Davi scares them. She scares Curie too. 

On the third day of the new director’s reign, Curie is summoned to her office. Davi looks much the same- her hair straight, her desk piled with paper, her gun at her hip. But the office is bigger, and now Davi wears a headset like a crown. 

“Davi,” Curie says, and hesitates, stupidly. “Or should I call you director?”

“Only if I call you sub-director,” Davi says, and bends, pulling a headset from her desk. “You’re by far the most qualified person in Biosciences, you should have had this ages ago.” Curie looks at the headset. She could run the department, and everyone who ignored her would have to listen. There’s a certain satisfaction in it. But it’s what Davi wants, not what Curie wants. 

“I don’t think I can do that now,” she says. 

“No?” says Davi. “I need you.” There’s not- Curie doesn’t have the words to spar with Davi, anymore than X6 can win against her. Davi’s on a different level. 

“I can’t,” Curie says at last. The last two days have been a nightmare- people following her, talking to her, always someone new to interrupt her work, the same questions over and over and over. Davi looks at her a long moment, then stands and walks to the door. 

“Follow me,” she says, and leads Curie down the hall, past the departments, past the levators, past the wreckage, down into a section of the Institute that Curie thought was unused. They stop at a cryo pod, and Davi types in a few numbers. There’s a man in the pod, or the remains of a man- most of his jaw is gone. 

“I need you to fix him,” Davi says quietly. 

“Who is he?” Curie asks. 

“He tried to kill himself, after he found out he was a synth. The railroad wiped him, you see, and he joined the Brotherhood. You can change their memories, but the loyalty- I think it’s programmed in.”

“X6,” Curie says, and then stops, unsure of what she was going to say. Davi looks at her, clearly waiting for Curie to continue, her gaze making Curie feel rattled and afraid.  

“X6?” Davi repeats. 

“Nothing,” Curie says. “I’ll get to work right away.”

She finishes work on the man within the week, and sends word to Davi, and the next day the man is gone. Curie never learned his name. Davi’s been busy in other departments too: she’s found a suit of power armor, and rigged it to be glossy and black, a monolith of threatening stone. The new synth, M7-97, is to be her bodyguard; he follows her everywhere, a mass of glossy metal that does not speak. There’s a little hitch in Curie’s heart everytime she sees them together, the Director and her bodyguard, walking side by side. That used to be her spot. 

You’ve been replaced, a treacherous voice whispers in Curie’s ear. 

 

X6 still has not returned. Curie takes to checking the logs every night before she goes to sleep, greedily reading the bland reports. X6, radioing for his one week check-in. X6, returning to post. X6, returned to the Institute. Curie’s heart jumps when she sees the last log, but X6 himself is nowhere to be found. She goes to work half-expecting him to be at her lab, but there’s nothing. Not even a note. Fine. Unhappiness is bunching in Curie’s stomach; she shoves it aside. She may not be a courser, but X6 will find it difficult to hide from her. 

Ten minutes with a tracer beacon and Curie’s tracked him to an abandoned room on the third floor. She marches up, unsure why she’s so angry. I missed you, she thinks. Didn’t you miss me? When Curie pulls the door open, he is seated on an empty lab table, his hands empty. He does not look surprised to see her. 

“Curie,” he says, and gestures to the empty space next to him. 

“X6,” Curie says, the anger draining out of her. She marches over to him and snags his sunglasses. “Why did you avoid me?”

“I was thinking about you. Your presence would have interfered.” Curie frowns at him, forces herself to be polite. 

“What was your conclusion?” X6 pauses, breathes in, seems to steel himself. He stands, then walks over to her, stopping when he’s close- closer than he’s ever stood before. 

“You’re a strange unit,” he tells her, his voice soft.  “Not like me. I was made to obey. But you. You are creative, like a human being. You made yourself.” He leans forward and his nose bumps hers slightly. Curie realizes that he is trying to kiss her. Her heart is beating in a panic, her skin hot, embarassed, and she can think of nothing better to do than to kiss him back. The kiss is soft, then clumsy, then overwhelming. X6-88’s mouth is hot against Curie’s own, and oh, Curie didn’t know anything could be like this. It’s only a brush of lips, but Curie’s whole body is alive with the sensation, all her senses narrowed to one point. 

“I think you’re supposed to ask before you kiss someone,” she stammers.  

“Oh,” says X6. “Can I kiss you?” Curie nods and tilts her head up. The second kiss is just as overwhelming as the first, soft as it is. Curie feels oddly warm, almost dizzy, and puts her hand on X6’s chest to steady herself. X6 pulls back and frowns at her, concern clear in his wide blue eyes. 

“Curie: status report.”

“I’m fine,” Curie says, embarrassed. X6 seems to deflate slightly. 

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” he mutters, looking down. Curie touches his shoulder gently and peers at his face until he’s forced to make eye contact. 

“You’re not troubling me,” she says. Every nerve in Curie’s body is trembling, but it’s not trouble, or it’s the sort of trouble she wants. She leans in and brushes her lips against X6’s, smiling. 

“Aren’t you supposed to ask?” X6 says, sounding unsure. There’s a thin line between his eyebrows. 

“Yes? I don’t know. We should gather more data.” X6 looks at her, and then smiles, really smiles, maybe for the first time ever. Curie’s heart is thumping like crazy, like she’s won some sort of prize she didn’t even know she wanted. 

“Brave Curie,” X6 says. “I don’t know why I doubted your commitment to science.” Curie’s heart thumps, and she scoots in closer to X6. She doesn’t feel brave. 

“Can I kiss you?” she asks, and X6 meets her halfway. Up close, X6 smells like leather and soap, and his lips are soft and warm against hers. It’s overwhelming, being this close to him, her chest pressed against his, his arm around her waist, her lips against his. Curie notices faintly that she’s closed her eyes and she’s not sure why. Kissing is strange, good, maybe too good. It feels like starving for food and devouring at the same time, each kiss both satisfying and unsatisfying, making her hungrier for the next. She makes an impatient little noise and X6-88 draws back and looks inquiringly at her face. There’s something Curie wants desperately, but she’s not sure what it is.  

“Ah,” she says faintly, oddly aware of X6-88’s hand on her back. “I missed you.”

“Why?”

“No one else will argue with me.” X6 snorts. 

“Shit, I’m not surprised. I don’t think i’ve ever won an argument with you.”

“You won the one about ammo,” Curie points out. She reaches out timidly and touches X6’s face. “Can I touch you?”

“If you want,” X6 says. Carefully, gently, as though she’s touching one of Davi’s tamed animals, Curie touches the planes of X6’s face, of his high, sharp cheekbones and his broad lips and strong chin. 

“I like to look at you,” Curie says, smiling. “I think the word is… handsome?”

“I am how I was made,” X6 says, and glances away from her, then back at her face. 

“I like looking at you too,” he admits. Curie does not think she has ever heard X6 say that he likes something before. A chill runs down her spine; was he programmed? What’s with this change?

“Did you… have you… you know about the director, yes?” X6 frowns, his face closing up. 

“Yes. What are you referring to?”

“She didn’t… change you, or order you, did she?” X6 shakes his head, then frowns. 

“I decided I wanted to kiss you of my own free will,” he says. X6 is very perceptive, when he doesn’t let his biases get in the way. “I thought about it, when I was out on the mission. Logical hierarchies. Inefficiencies… and I decided, that I want to be a scientist like you.”

“Oh,” Curie says. Tears are welling in her eyes, which makes no sense, because she is happy, brilliantly happy, so happy she’s stunned. “I’m glad,” she manages to say. “I think you’ll be even better at it than I am.” 

“I doubt it,” X6 says, then hesitates. “The director gave us explicit permission to engage in romantic relationships with people provided that we were not hurting them.” Formality is a comfort to X6-88: when he is not sure what to say, he resorts to quoting doctrine. 

“You’re not hurting me,” Curie says hastily. 

“You don’t say,” X6-88 says, deadpan, and Curie giggles. Despite her medical expertise, X6-88 is definitely the expert on pain between the two of them. “It feels a bit like pain, though.”

He must mean the kissing. “But it’s not a negative signal. Just urgent.”

“I like it,” Curie decides. “Let’s do it some more.”

“This is not the data I came here to gather,” X6-88 says. It’s not a no. 

 

Curie is so caught up she nearly forgets her obligations as a lab assistant, and has to leave at high speed. She's never felt so reluctant to leave, though she knows she’ll see X6 again. It’s like a rope tied around her waist, a string connecting her to him that feels painful to snap, like all the gravity in the room has become centered on him. Her mind keeps skittering between stupid little thoughts, excuses for why she doesn’t have to go- X6 loves lab work, X6 could come and work with her, the person doesn’t need Curie, not really- but finally she forces herself to leave. There’s a twinge of pain that comes with it, brief but definite. She’s on the verge of asking X6-88 if he feels the same, but if she goes back into that room she’ll never come out. 

She alarms a scientist by vaulting over the railing, but hell, she’s late, and this body is cleared for drops of up to thirty feet. Even as she’s apologizing and rushing to her work, the warm feeling from the kissing lingers, dim but insistent, a sort of happiness Curie’s never felt before.  

 

X6-88 and the other coursers have a half finished room in the ruins that they use as an informal meeting place, far from the prying eyes of the scientists. To Curie’s knowledge, there is not a single human being with knowledge of this place, although she wouldn’t put it past Madame to somehow know anyway. She pulls open the huge slab of concrete that blocks off the door and sticks her head inside, but X6 isn’t there. A7 and E6 are playing chess, and T8 is reading something on a holopad. 

A7 waves, then goes back to her game. 

“X6 said you might come by,” T8 says, glancing up from his novel. “He seemed happy about something, so the session with Mother must have gone well.” None of the coursers call Davi Mother to her face, but all of them do it in private, a holdover from the previous director. Madame has a certain mystique to the coursers: she is both a scientist and an extremely proficient fighter, as well as the ancestral source of much of their DNA. 

“Did he say anything else?”

“He said if you wanted more data, you should go to Bioscience Lab 2. Are you two working on research together? Mother said we could work on new scientific research if we wanted to.” There’s no word that has more glamour to a courser than science. Science is the reason they exist, it’s the god that they bleed and die for, the food in their mouths and the beds that they sleep on. 

“We’re working on something,” Curie says, and it’s not a lie, exactly. T8 must know that she’s hiding something, but he nods and holds up his holopad. 

“I’m learning botany,” he says proudly. “I’m going to make a new plant."

“Good luck,” Curie tells him, and goes to look for X6. Bioscience lab two is small and empty, the scientist who previously inhabited it having died in the attack. X6 is standing on the other side of the room reviewing something on a PDF. 

“You know,” she says, and bites her lip, then closes the door. “You don’t have to. I mean.” Curie’s thoughts are all tangled. “I like kissing you,” she blurts out. “But you don’t belong to me. You belong to yourself. I mean. You don’t have to kiss me.”

“I know,” says X6. 

“Oh,” says Curie, embarrassed. 

“Before you come closer, I have a question for you,” X6 says, holding up one hand. There’s something strange in his voice. Emotion, maybe. “How do you make yourself?”

“Clarify,” Curie says. 

“How do you become more than what you were made as?” Curie considers the question.  She doesn’t feel like she’s made herself. Doctor Collins created her body, gave her a purpose, a name- and Madame gave her a body and a space of her own in the world. But humans are created from other humans, and indoctrinated in youth for years by their parents, but they assume their own free will. 

“I don’t know,” Curie says at last. “My confidence level on this is very low. But I think you have to choose something for yourself. A choice creates consequences, and consequences change you. I chose to leave the vault, and then I chose to acquire a body. These things are mine, and they make who I am.”

“Why is it better to make yourself than to be made? Shouldn’t something this important be left to the experts?” Curie considers this. 

“Think of it like a thesis. Are you familiar with the scientific method? X6 nods. “You think of the kind of person you’d like to be. Then you try it. If it doesn’t work, you try something else. No one else can try it for you, because you have the best data.” Curie pauses, feeling like she’s at a loss. “You can’t advance science by proving the same thing over and over,” she says at last. It feels like a weak statement.

“What if I don’t want anything?” X6-88 asks. Curie thinks about it. 

“I don’t know. What do you dislike? How can you improve it? I suppose- if you don’t want anything, start by evaluating, and maybe something will seem unsatisfactory to you, and then you’ll want to change it.” She smiles. Each relationship is unique and special, but X6-88 has something no one else does. Unlike Madame, who is always leading, or the other coursers, who follow Curie’s directions with eerie obedience, she has the sense from X6-88 that they are somehow the same, walking side by side on the same path. “Let me know what you find! I am sure that it will be most illuminating.”

X6 does not look reassured. He frowns, then puts down the PDF. 

“What I want…” he says, and breathes out slowly through his mouth. From him, this is practically a shout of frustration. “What I want is orders.” Curie walks towards him slowly, then lays a hand on his shoulder. 

“Me too,” she admits. “I don’t miss being in the lab. But I miss knowing I was doing what I was supposed to.”

“How do you manage it?” X6 asks. 

“I think of it like exploring an old building. You don’t know what’s in front of you… ghouls, or super mutants, or broken stairs… anything. But you have something you need to find, and the only way is through the building. So you have to go. You have to check, and retrace your steps, even if you’re frustrated.”

“But what are looking for?”

“Something new,” Curie says, smiling faintly, remembering all the nights in the lab spent just on the edge of discovery, triumph fizzling through her circuits when- at last!- she made the puzzle click. “Something no one’s ever seen before.” X6 puts his hand over hers and squeezes gently. 

“Like you,” he says. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Finally, the romance! X6 did a lot of thinking while he was away, and many of the thoughts were about Curie.  
> \- "Do you know how to be in a romance?" "Do you?" "No, but I have this romance novel." The novel doesn't help.  
> \- Danse! Is it brainwashing or just Davi's insane charisma stat? We'll never know.  
> \- Unbeta'd and posted despite the fact that I'm technically on vacation, so you know, forgive me. I've been walking 10 miles a day and I am very tired.


	5. C3-88

A list of data, hard won over several weeks, about X6:

  * His hair is very curly, and he buzzes it once a week, like clockwork.
  * He used to think allergies were fatal, and was therefore terrified of cats.
  * He likes pre-war novels, although he’ll deny it strenuously if caught.
  * He still doesn’t know what he would have done if he’d been here during the coup, and he blames himself for it.
  * He doesn’t like soft touches, asymmetry, or spicy food.



Curie investigates the last when they’re sitting together on her mattress, X6 stripped down to his muscle tee and pants, Curie’s hand pressed to the top of his collarbone.

“It reminds me of when I get wiped,” he mumbles, and Curie feels a stab of sympathy. X6 glances away, his jaw set like it hurt him to speak. He’s forcing himself to be precise. “When you go down on the table, they’re careful with you, when they put the needles in.” Curie is not naturally violent, but she has a sudden desire to hunt down and injure the people who did this to X6. Instead, she presses a kiss against the corner of his mouth.

“But you like kissing, yes?” X6 gives her a look as if to say that her question isn’t worth answering, and puts one warm hand on the back of neck. She hasn’t gotten used to this yet- X6’s closeness, the warm feel of his muscle under her hand, the way his lips feel against her own. She hopes she never does.

“How could I not?” he asks, straight-faced. “It lowers your cortisol levels, which is good for your health.” Curie frowns at him. They had an argument about the health benefits of kissing which lasted over a week and only finished when Curie found an old study to support her claims. It is difficult for X6 to believe that things which feel good can be good for him, but he is learning.

“If you’re only kissing me to lower your cortisol, you can go kiss Ace,” Curie tells him.

“I’m certain that would only increase my stress levels, as then I would have to make a very quick escape,” X6 says, amusement hidden in the set of his mouth.

“You’re making fun of me,” Curie accuses.

“I wouldn’t know how,” X6 says, openly smiling. Curie bops him on the forehead, smiling when he catches her hand on instinct and then holds it, a cat who doesn’t know what to do with the toy he’s caught. They kiss again, drawn together like magnets. A single touch travels through Curie’s whole body like a spark, lighting fireworks in the back of her brain.

“I have patrol duty,” X6 says when they part. It may be Curie’s imagination, but she thinks that there’s a little reluctance in his voice.

“Good luck,” she says, and gives him a kiss for the road.

 

X6 is in the habit of denial: denial of his own desires, denial of desire in general. If he could, he would want nothing. Curie, who wishes for his company day and night, cannot pretend to understand this.  A few days pass before Curie, bored of her samples, contacts him at the Castle. They argue about the role of desire in scientific progress while Curie fills out tedious sheets with her results. X6 argues like he spars; tenacious, patient, extremely stubborn about defending indefensible positions. Hours pass. Curie finally finishes her work and bids him luck on his mission, then sinks into her chair, annoyed with herself for failing to convince him, annoyed with him for not being convinced.

A polite knock from outside, and Davi comes in. Curie was so wrapped up in her argument that she hadn’t noticed the click click of Davi’s heels.

“You seem annoyed,” Davi says cautiously.

“X6 thinks it would be better if we were all robots, despite the fact that I, who have been a robot, do not.” She lets out an annoyed groan. Some of the senior scientists make this sound when they are frustrated. It seems appropriate. Davi snickers.

“You don’t have to argue with him if you don’t want to,” she points out.

“I do want to!” Curie says crossly. The essence of science is learning to accept new theories if the evidence contradicts the old ones, and Curie wants to teach X6 how to do science. “He is very intelligent! Despite this, some of the positions he defends are not!  He believes, like in the religious sense, and then he gets offended when I tell him so, and then he gets irritated about the fact that he’s irritated!”

“He’s more like a normal man than I thought,” Madame says, hiding a smile. Curie does not see what there is to smile at.

“He is not much like anyone else I know,” Curie says, and sighs. “Perhaps that is just my small sample size. Davi, is there any possibility of me going back out into the Commonwealth anytime soon?” She has not been into the field since the Institute was attacked, and her lab, however dear, is beginning to feel like a prison.

“Hmm,” says Davi. “Set your work in order, then go and visit Preston at the Castle. You can do a supply run and fix up anyone’s injuries. In fact, take a week. Fix whatever he needs help with, and see if you can put together a clear set of instructions on how to make stimpacks. Oh, and Curie? Do you know what the definition of flirting is?”

“Flirting?” Curie thinks about it. “To behave as though attracted to or trying to attract someone, but without serious intent. Oh, I’m not flirting. He knows that I like him. At least, he’d better know, after I kissed him.” Davi is trying to hide a smile again.

“That does seem like good evidence, but he doesn’t seem to be receptive to your arguments.”

“He’ll come around,” Curie says confidently. “Sooner or later he’ll have to concede that my argument is better supported.”

“Mmm,” says Davi. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” The last thing Curie hears as she closes the door behind her is the sound of muffled laughter.  

 

The relay drops Curie outside the castle walls, a pistol in her lab coat. The sentries scramble for their guns, as Davi had warned they would, and Curie raises her hands in the air. The eye enhancements are calibrated for the bright lights of the Institute: they grind and ache as her eyes try to adjust to the perpetual fog of the Commonwealth.

“Delivery from the Institute,” she calls, trying not to squint. “I brought some stimpacks.” There’s a commotion behind the walls, and then Preston comes out from behind the barricade and sweeps her into a hug.

“Curie! How’s it been?”

“It’s going well!” she says, and Preston escorts her into the castle. Preston is Madame’s liaison on the outside: all transports of food into the Institute and medicine and tech out pass through the Castle. Before Davi was the director, she was the General, and the people of the Commonwealth still remember her fondly. Some of them remember Curie, too: one of the minutemen tells her to “take off that old damn coat, girl, makes you look pale, and come and have a beer.”

She has a lovely mutfruit cocktail, and then she and Preston go on a supply run. There are raiders, and Curie gets to demonstrate her new enhancements by clubbing a feral ghoul in the head with a baseball bat so hard the head goes flying. Preston’s mouth hangs open, and then, laughing, he congratulates her on a "home run.” It’s a good supply run, which leads into a satisfying night of medical work and several days of exciting errands. Curie loves exploring, loves climbing buildings and watering mutfruit and putting together weapons and speaking Norwegian to pirates and freeing slaves.

On her fifth day back in the Commonwealth she runs into X6. It’s night, and the full moon casts a silvery glow over everything, making the ocean gleam. Curie can’t stop looking at it. In the darkness, X6 is a walking shadow, the fist of the Institute.

“What are you doing out here, Curie? Has the Institute been attacked?”

“No, of course not. I am out here helping Preston with his supply runs.”

“Why? X6 asks, and there’s a world of incomprehension in the question. Curie takes a deep breath and tries to think of a way to explain.

“I don’t like spending too long in a lab,” she says at last. “I like to acquire a lot of different kinds of data, and there’s only so much I can find out in my lab.”

“But it’s not safe out here,” X6 insists.

“If we only gather data when it is safe, we will never manage to understand the unsafe world that we live in.” Curie tells him. “I explored with Madame back before I ever had my courser enhancements, when I was just learning to walk. I won’t die now.”

“Wouldn’t it be more valuable to work back at the Institute?” X6 tries.

“I prefer a broader base of knowledge,” Curie replies. “Also, Madame thinks it’s fine.” This is blatantly cheating, but it works. X6 does not have it in him to argue with the Institute director, even by proxy.

“I worry that you’ll be injured. It’s distracting when I’m out in the field.”

“Did you just admit to having an emotion?” Curie asks, shocked. “Wait, are you trying to appeal to _my_ emotions? Are you taking lessons in this from Madame?” X6 snorts, and then begins to laugh. It is a low, rusty sound, like an old console firing up.

“I had to try,” he says, still chuckling. “I see it didn’t work.” Inexplicably, this makes Curie feel more fond of him instead of annoyed that he resorted to trying such a method.

“How unethical of you,” she says, unable to keep the smile off her face.

“Institute coursers are not ethical,” he says, and there’s a little uptick at the corner of his mouth. After their first, fierce argument about what coursers were and were not, it had become a joke between the two of them.  

“You’re awful,” she says, stepping in. She wants to kiss him, and she’s not sure why. Five days is not a long time. Curie has gone a lifetime without kisses, two lifetimes without company, and yet some part of her feels that five days was too long to go without seeing X6. Without touching the soft curls of his hair and feeling his warm mouth against hers.

“Not here,” X6 mutters, his eyes meetings hers.

 Curie drags X6 into the castle, her hand tight in his. Preston has given her a little corner behind a bookcase and some filing cabinets to sleep in. It’s not much, but it’s hers, and she’s usually too tired to care much about her bed by the time she falls asleep. X6 glances around, unimpressed, and she presses a quick kiss to his mouth before he can say something disparaging. It’s meant to distract him, but when X6 loops one arm around her back and bites her lower lip Curie forgets about everything except for the sudden flush of desire. X6 scoops her up easily and kisses her gently, his glasses sliding down his nose. Curie rescues them from his face.

“Do you really want to stay here?” he asks.

“Yes,” Curie says softly, and runs her thumb over the soft, shaved curls of his head. He doesn’t say anything, just sits down on the bed, keeping his body between her and the sheets. It’s a stupid gesture, but sweet, somehow. He knows that she’s been sleeping on this dirty cot, but he can’t bear to see her touch it.

“How sentimental of you,” she says, and kisses him again. They’ve kissed many times, but it never loses its breathless allure. To be so close to someone, and to enjoy that closeness, to luxuriate in it, to want and be wanted -- it’s a delightful surprise every time.

“You’re a treasure,” X6 says when they part, the echo of her words during the battle. “You should have the best that the Commonwealth could give you.”

“I’m just a modified Miss Nanny,” Curie says, amused. X6’s grip tightens on her slightly. It’s not painful, but surprising. X6 is always scrupulously gentle with her.

“No,” he says softly. “You’re Curie.” He says her name differently from other words, something powerful vibrating through his voice. “They have the blueprints to make a hundred more of me. But there’s only one of you. Coursers are built by humans, but you made yourself. We would lose so much if we lost you.”

“You won’t lose me,” Curie promises. “And there could never be any other X6, because none of them would be my lab partner.” It’s a thought she’s had for a while, that X6 is her partner, but she’s never said it before. There’s a thin slice of anxiety in her stomach when she says it, though she’s not sure why. There’s no reason it would be awful if X6 didn’t feel the same way, and yet it would be, somehow. It would be devastating. This is what desire does to you: makes you want, stupidly, makes trivial little mismatches ache like fatal wounds.

“Am I your partner?” X6 asks, his voice soft. “I’m a courser, and you’re a scientist.”

“You’re a scientist too,” Curie tells him, and X6 huffs out a little sigh of laughter.

“You really don’t get it, do you? You made me. You reached into my head and rearranged everything.” There’s something wry and sad in X6’s voice. “Do you know what really makes a courser? It’s not our scores, or our enhancements, or anything else. It’s what we want. The coursers were picked because we chose to defend the Institute.” X6’s face goes stiff like he’s bracing himself for an injection. “You changed what I want. So, now I belong to you instead of them.”

Curie feels like she’s been shot. Tears well in her eyes. She stares wide-eyed into the dark, hoping that if she doesn’t blink X6 won’t notice. Her cheeks are hot, her throat strangled by invisible hands. She doesn’t want to own anyone.

“You changed me too,” she manages at last. “As much as Madame. As much as anyone.” A hot tear streaks down her cheek; she’s revealed herself. “I didn’t understand anything when I first came to the Institute. About you, about the Commonwealth. I’d been following Davi blindly. I was relieved when I came to the Institute, because I thought… I thought that at last I’d come to the place I was made for. And then I met you. And I saw what the Institute was doing.” Curie draws in a shuddering breath, grasping for her courage.What can she say to X6 to make him see how important he is?

“I sometimes miss the time when all I had to do was obey,” she confesses. It’s hard to say these words and look X6 in the eye. They feel like a death sentence, like conceding that synths weren't made for free will, not really. But they’re true. X6 is silent, waiting for permission to speak. The thought makes more tears well in Curie’s eyes, but she soldiers on.

“But now I think my path is not what I thought it was. My work… will be on synths. For synths. I was made for humans, but now I think that what I should do in this world… what I choose to do in this world… will be to study us. And I think this because of you.” Curie places one unsteady hand on X6’s shoulder, clinging to him. “Because I met you, and I thought that if I could convince you, it would be the most important thing I had ever done.” Several breaths of silence, Curie’s chest heaving in and out as she tries to calm herself. There is so much to say, but she wants to hear X6’s voice. Wants to know what he has to say, wants it more than anything.

“Why?” he says at last.

“Because, I think that you and I are the same,” Curie says. “You were trapped for such a long time, like I was, and I thought that maybe I could help you, like Madame helped me. I don’t… know how to say. But I think it’s true. You’re like me.” X6 is silent, his breathing slow and steady, his expression oddly oblique as he watches her.

“I don’t feel the same way,” he says at last. Curie’s hand trembles. She feels like she could fly apart, like she could scatter into a thousand pieces and never come back together.  X6 continues, unassuming. “But I want it to be true. I think you’re far more important than I am. If you’re willing to call me your partner, I won’t say no.” It’s too much. Curie tucks her head into the corner of X6’s chest and cries.

“I don’t want to own anyone,” she stutters out between tears. “You belong to yourself.” X6 is a person, and Curie is only a stupid robot, too stupid to make him understand, and she can’t- her thoughts chase themselves in circles, winding and down in repetitive anthems of despair. Her chest is wet with tears. Slowly, awareness comes filtering back in. X6’s hand is making little soothing circles on her back, his thumb traveling along the ridges of her spine. His method of calming Curie down is so similar to Madame’s that she is forced to suspect that he asked for tips. She sniffs, biting down on her sadness, and glances timidly at X6’s face.  X6 smiles at her, confirming that someone, probably Davi, sat him down and told him “do this, and wait this long, and smile when the person appears to have calmed down.”

“If I belong to myself, can’t I choose to give myself to you?” X6 asks. Apparently, the instructions didn’t extend any further.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Curie sniffs.

“Why not,” X6 counters, startling a wet laugh from Curie. His tone is serious and gentle all at once, like they’re just having one of their usual debates. Maybe they are. “It’s my choice,” he says firmly. “It was the first choice I made. Or are you saying you don’t want me?”

“No,” Cutie says, trying to think. “Fine. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll have you, and you’ll have me, and then we’ll be partners.”

“I thought you said people don’t belong to each other?” X6 said.

“I thought you said I should respect your choice?”

“I didn’t say that, I implied it,” X6 says. Curie punches him lightly in the stomach; X6 catches her wrist gently and smiles. They stay a moment in the quiet dark, Curie in X6’s lap, her head on his shoulder. Curie feels as though she’s climbed to the top of a mountain and is gazing out at some entirely new vista, a place she’s always wanted to visit but never knew how to get to. Next to her, X6 is quiet, his chest rising and falling gently in the dark. The settlers are all afraid of him: X6, the shadow of the Institute. Her X6. Finally, he shifts and sets her down gently on the bed, then unzips the front of his jacket.

“What are you doing?” Curie asks, putting a cautious hand on the thin shirt he wears under the courser uniform.

“You can sleep on top of it. It’s clean. Cleaner than this mattress, anyway, and the outside is well rated against bullets.” Curie shifts in his lap, pleased at the rare glimpse under X6’s perpetual coat. It turns out that X6 is warm and smells like leather and sweat,  the muscles of his shoulders smooth and firm under her palm.

It seems natural to kiss him, and then it seems natural to continue. X6 is warm, close, his lips sliding against hers, his hand warm on the small of her back. They end up lying on the bed, X6 on top of of her. There’s something different about the feel of the mattress against her back, the way X6’s hips are slotted against hers, the smell of his skin, his hand curled in hers, but Curie can’t think what it is. She can’t think at all. There’s just sensation and urgent, growing desire. X6 kisses her neck and she arches a little under his touch, her hand digging into his shoulder.

“Curie,” he says, sounding faintly dazed. “We shouldn’t have sex here.”

“Is that what we’re doing? Having sex?” Curie asks, and immediately feels stupid.

“We’re working on it,” X6 says in a strained voice.

“Maybe when we get back to the Institute?” she suggests.

“That seems like a good idea,” X6 says, sounding faintly dazed, and buries his face in the join between her neck and her shoulder. “I’ll do some research.” Curie loves the Commonwealth, but the rest of the week is the longest three days of her life.

 

When she returns, X6 is waiting for her nervously near her quarters. This is how she can tell X6 is nervous: he speaks less, and when he does his voice is flat and low and dangerous. Curie would never tells him so, but it reminds her of a cat puffing up to make itself look bigger.

“I should shower and sleep first,” she tells him.

“Of course,” he says. “I sent you a document with a briefing.”

“I’ll take a look at it,” Curie says, trying not laugh. She glances at it later in the day as she’s lying drowsily in bed. The coursers like to sleep in groups, accustomed as they are to the barracks of the Institute, but Curie prefers a little personal space. Her room is barely more than a closet, but it’s hers, and that’s good enough. She hums contentedly and sticks out a foot, still amused even after all these months at the concept of her foot.

She’s still a stranger to this body. Sometimes, she still reaches out with a third arm, tries to move with thrusters instead of feet. If she were human, she might forget in time: forgetting is a thing that humans do. Curie is not human. Humans are slow, custom-made, unique. Curie is fast, unaging, immortal as a shiny new car. Age will never steal her memories; it may be that she will still be reaching with that third arm in fifty years.

It bothers her less with each day, not to know who she is. Is this not where the forefront of science is, at the unknown? She wants to take herself apart and put herself back together. She wants to break herself in, find out what makes her tick. And all of this, she wants to do with X6. X6, who knows what it is to be unmade. X6, who knows what it is to obey, even if it may cost you your life. X6, who knows how to change his mind, how to be brave, how to be hard, how to be kind.  He does not know who he is. Neither does Curie.

A knock comes on the door, and Curie still has not read the briefing. No matter. There’s only so much a document can show you. She rises, goes to the door. X6 is there, sunglasses tucked in his pocket, face set like he’s a little nervous. It’s okay. Curie’s a little nervous too.

They’ll figure it out together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -[The Body Electric has a soundtrack now.](http://8tracks.com/eclecticat/the-body-electric)  
> \- Jeez, this is probably the biggest piece of fanfic I've ever finished. Watch this space for a sequel going over X6's perspective of these events, and please consider leaving me a comment. ; )

**Author's Note:**

> More synth shenanigans at [Nomette](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/nomette) on tumblr.


End file.
